953  £ 

M414 


TRIBUTES 


TO 


LONGFELLOW  AND    EMERSON 


BY 


WITH   PORTRAITS. 


BOSTON: 

A.  WILLIAMS    AND   CO.,  PUBLISHERS, 

OLD  CORNER  BOOKSTORE,  283  WASHINGTON  ST. 
1882. 


TRIBUTES 


TO 


LONGFELLOW   AND    EMERSON 


BY 


STjje  ptassadjusette  J^tstorfcal  ^ 


COPYRIGHT     BY     A.     WILLIAMS     AND     CO.     1882. 


HENRY    WADSWORTH     LONGFELLOW. 


IN    ,88-2    HY    JA.MKS    M.IMAN,    HUSTON. 


TRIBUTES 


TO 


LONGFELLOW  AND    EMERSON 


BY 


Clje  ^assacfwsetts  ^fetoricai  §>actetp. 


WITH   PORTRAITS. 


BOSTON: 

A.  WILLIAMS   AND   CO.,  PUBLISHERS, 

OLD  CORNER  BOOKSTORE,  283  WASHINGTON  ST. 
1882. 


Printed  by  permission  of 
THE  MASSACHUSETTS  HISTORICAL  SOCIETY. 


UNIVERSITY  PRESS: 
JOHN  WILSON  AND  SON,  CAMBRIDGE. 


CONTENTS. 


PAGE 

TRIBUTES  TO  LONGFELLOW 9 

Remarks  of  Dr.  Ellis 9 

Remarks  of  Dr.  Holmes    ' 13 

Remarks  of  Professor  Norton 22 

Remarks  of  Mr.  William  Everett 26 

TRIBUTES  TO  EMERSON 31 

Remarks  of  Dr.  Ellis 31 

Letter  of  the  Hon.  E.  R.  Hoar 37 

Address  of  Dr.  Holmes 39 

EMERSON'S  IMPRESSIONS  OF  THOMAS  CARLYLE  IN  1848 51 

„          SPEECH  BEFORE  THE  BOSTON  BURNS  CLUB 56 

„         SPEECH  ON  SIR  WALTER  SCOTT 59 


M188274 


HENRY    WADSWORTH    LONGFELLOW, 

BORN    FEBRUARY  27,  1807. 
DIED    MARCH   24,    1882. 


TRIBUTES  TO  LONGFELLOW. 


THE  monthly  meeting  of  the  Massachusetts  Historical  Society 
was  held  on  Thursday,  April  13,  1882.  In  the  absence  of  Hon. 
Robert  C.  Winthrop,  president  of  the  society,  who  has  recently 
sailed  for  Europe,  the  senior  vice-president,  Dr.  George  E.  Ellis, 
occupied  the  chair.  The  librarian,  Mayor  Green,  read  the  monthly 
list  of  donors  to  the  library.  Rev.  E.  G.  Porter  read  a  communi 
cation  from  the  St.  Botolph  Club  accepting  Dr.  Ellis's  gift  of  a 
silver-gilt  loving-cup,  formerly  belonging  to  the  corporation  of  Bos 
ton,  Lincolnshire,  England,  and  now  presented  to  the  club  upon  the 
condition  "that  if  ever  the  club  shall  be  disbanded,  or  its  assets 
dispersed,  the  cup  shall  revert  to  the  Massachusetts  Historical 
Society."  The  corresponding  secretary,  Mr.  Winsor,  read  a  letter 
from  Professor  J.  R.  Seeley  of  Cambridge,  England,  accepting  the 
position  of  honorary  membership  in  the  society. 

Vice-President  ELLIS  then  said  :  — 


REMARKS    OF   DR.  ELLIS. 

MUCH  to  our  regret  we  miss  our  honored  President  from 
his  chair  to-day,  on  this,  the  ninety-first  annual  meeting  of 
the  Society.  It  is  gratifying  to  be  assured  that  he  has 


io  Massachusetts  Historical  Society. 

safely  reached  the  other  side  of  the  ocean,  and  may  be 
looked  for  with  us  again  early  in  the  autumn.  It  will  be 
remembered  that  in  opening  the  last  meeting  he  expressed 
for  us  all  the  relief  which  he  found  in  not  being  called  upon, 
as  in  such  rapid  and  melancholy  succession  he  had  been  at 
so  many  previous  meetings,  to  announce  a  loss  from  our 
limited  roll  of  associates.  But  again  must  there  be  stricken 
from  it  the  name  of  one  who  leaves  upon  the  list  no  other 
so  enshrined  in  the  affection,  the  grateful  homage,  we  may 
even  say  the  venerating  regard  of  the  world-wide  fellow 
ship  of  civilized  humanity. 

On  the  announcement  to  our  deeply-moved  community 
of  the  death  of  Mr.  Longfellow,  though  I  had  taken  leave  of 
Mr.  Winthrop  near  the  eve  of  his  departure,  I  wrote  to  him 
asking  that  he  would  commit  to  me,  to  be  read  here  and 
now,  what  he  would  himself  have  said  if  he  were  to  be  with 
us  to-day.  In  his  brief  note  of  reply  he  writes,  "  How  gladly 
would  I  comply  with  your  suggestion,  and  send  you,  for  the 
next  meeting  of  our  Society,  some  little  tribute  to  our 
lamented  Longfellow.  But  at  this  last  hurried  moment 
before  leaving  home,  I  could  do  justice  neither  to  him  nor 
to  myself.  I  was  just  going  out  to  bid  him  good-by,  when 
his  serious  illness  was  announced,  and  in  a  day  or  two  more 
all  was  over.  The  last  time  he  was  in  Europe  I  was  there 
with  him,  and  I  was  a  witness  to  not  a  few  of  the  honors 
which  he  received  from  high  and  low.  I  remember  partic 
ularly  that  when  we  were  coming  away  from  the  House  of 
Lords  together,  where  we  had  been  hearing  a  fine  speech 
from  his  friend  the  Duke  of  Argyll,  a  group  of  the  common 
people  gathered  around  our  carriage,  calling  him  by  name, 


Tributes  to  Longfellow.  1 1 

begging  to  touch  his  hand,  and  at  least  one  of  them  reciting 
aloud  one  of  his  most  familiar  poems.  No  poet  of  our  day 
has  touched  the  common  heart  like  Longfellow.  The  sim 
plicity  and  purity  of  his  style  were  a  part  of  his  own  char 
acter.  He  had  nothing  of  that  irritability  which  is  one  of 
the  proverbial  elements  of  the  poetic  temperament,  but  was 
always  genial,  generous,  lovely."  ...  I  will  not  attempt  to 
add  anything,  as  tribute,  to  that  heart  utterance  from  our 
President.  Indeed,  it  would  be  difficult  to  find  variations  in 
the  terms  of  language  even,  much  more  in  the  sentiments  to 
be  expressed  by  them,  in  tributes  of  tender  and  appreciative 
regard  and  affection  for  Mr.  Longfellow.  Full  and  profound 
in  depth  and  earnestness  have  been  the  honors  to  him  in 
speech  and  print ;  richer  still,  because  unutterable,  and  only 
for  the  privacy  of  those  who  cherish  them,  are  the  respon 
sive  silences  of  the  heart. 

It  is  fitting,  however,  that  we  put  on  record  our  recogni 
tion  of  Mr.  Longfellow  in  his  relations  to  this  Society.  He 
accepted  the  membership  to  which  he  had  been  elected  in 
December,  1857.  Those  who  were  associates  in  it  twenty- 
five  years  ago  will  recall  two  signal  occasions  delightfully 
associated  with  his  presence  and  speech.  The  one  was  a 
special  meeting,  to  which  he  invited  the  Society  at  his  own 
residence,  as  Washington's  headquarters,  in  Cambridge,  on 
June  i yth,  1858.  There  was  much  of  charming  and  instruc 
tive  interest  in  the  scenes  and  associations  of  the  occasion, 
added  to  the  communications  made  by  several  members  full 
of  historic  information  freshly  related  from  original  sources. 
The  host  himself  was  silent,  save  as  by  his  genial  greeting 
and  warm  hospitality  he  welcomed  his  grateful  guests.  The 


12 


Massachusetts  Historical  Society. 


other  marked  occasion  was  also  at  a  special  meeting  of  the 
Society,  held  in  December,  1859,  at  the  house  of  our  asso 
ciate,  Mr.  Sears.  The  meeting  was  devoted  to  tributes  of 
respect  and  affection  for  Washington  Irving,  from  many 
who  had  shared  his  most  intimate  friendship.  Mr.  Long 
fellow  gave  hearty  and  delicate  expression  to  his  regard  for 
Irving,  while  Everett,  Felton,  Colonel  Aspinwall,  Prescott, 
and  Dr.  Holmes  contributed  their  offerings  to  the  memory 
of  that  admired  author.  But  few  of  our  associates,  in  its 
nearly  a  century  of  years,  can  have  studied  our  local  and 
even  national  history  more  sedulously  than  did  Mr.  Long 
fellow.  And  but  fewer  still  among  us  can  have  found  in  its 
stern  and  rugged  and  homely  actors  and  annals  so  much 
that  could  be  graced  and  softened  by  rich  and  delicate 
fancies,  by  refining  sentiments,  and  the  hues  and  fragrance 
of  simple  poetry.  He  took  the  saddest  of  our  New  Eng 
land  tragedies,  and  the  sweetest  of  its  rural  home  scenes, 
the  wayside  inn,  the  alarum  of  war,  the  Indian  legend,  and 
the  hanging  of  the  crane  in  the  modest  household,  and  his 
genius  has  invested  them  with  enduring  charms  and  morals. 
Wise  and  gentle  was  the  heart  which  could  thus  find  melo 
dies  for  the  harp,  the  lyre,  and  the  plectrum  in  our  fields 
and  wildernesses,  wreathing  them  as  nature  does  the  thickets 
and  stumps  of  the  forest  with  flowers  and  mosses.  While 
all  his  utterances  came  from  a  pure,  a  tender,  and  a  devout 
heart,  addressing  themselves  to  what  is  of  like  in  other 
hearts,  there  is  not  in  them  a  line  of  morbidness,  of  depres 
sion,  or  melancholy,  but  only  that  which  quickens  and 
cheers  with  robust  resolve  and  courage,  with  peace  and 
aspiring  trust.  He  has,  indeed,  used  freely  the  poet's 


Tributes  to  Longfellow.  13 

license  in  playful  freedom  with  dates  and  facts.  But  the 
scenes  and  incidents  and  personages  which  most  need  a 
softening  and  refining  touch,  receive  it  from  him  without 
prejudice  to  the  service  of  sober  history. 

The  following  resolution  was  then  offered :  — 

Resolved,  That  in  yielding  from  our  roll  the  name  of 
Henry  Wadsworth  Longfellow,  we  would  put  on  our  records 
the  expression  of  our  profoundest  regard,  esteem,  and  admir 
ing  appreciation  of  his  character  and  genius,  and  our  grate 
ful  sense  of  the  honor  and  satisfaction  we  have  shared  in 
his  companionship. 

The  resolution  was  seconded  by  Dr.  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES, 
who  arose  and  addressed  the  Society  with  much  feeling,  as  fol 
lows  :  — 

REMARKS   OF   DR.   HOLMES. 

It  is  with  no  vain  lamentations,  but  rather  with  profound 
gratitude  that  we  follow  the  soul  of  our  much-loved  and 
long-loved  poet  beyond  the  confines  of  the  world  he  helped 
so  largely  to  make  beautiful.  We  could  have  wished  to 
keep  him  longer,  but  at  least  we  were  spared  witnessing  the 
inevitable  shadows  of  an  old  age  protracted  too  far  beyond 
its  natural  limits.  From  the  first  notes  of  his  fluent  and 
harmonious  song  to  the  last,  which  comes  to  us  as  the  "  voice 
fell  like  a  falling  star,"  there  has  never  been  a  discord. 
The  music  of  the  mountain  stream,  in  the  poem  which 
reaches  us  from  the  other  shore  of  being  is  as  clear  and 
sweet  as  the  melodies  of  the  youthful  and  middle  periods  of 


14  Massachusetts  Historical  Society. 

his  minstrelsy.  It  has  been  a  fully  rounded  life,  beginning 
early  with  large  promise,  equalling  every  anticipation  in  its 
maturity,  fertile  and  beautiful  to  its  close  in  the  ripeness  of 
its  well-filled  years. 

Until  the  silence  fell  upon  us  we  did  not  entirely  appre 
ciate  how  largely  his  voice  was  repeated  in  the  echoes  of 
our  own  hearts.  The  afHuence  of  his  production  so  accus 
tomed  us  to  look  for  a  poem  from  him  at  short  intervals 
that  we  could  hardly  feel  how  precious  that  was  which  was 
so  abundant  Not,  of  course,  that  every  single  poem  reached 
the  standard  of  the  highest  among  them  all.  That  could 
not  be  in  Homer's  time,  and  mortals  must  occasionally  nod 
now  as  then.  But  the  hand  of  the  artist  shows  itself  unmis- 

cably  in  everything  which  left  his  desk.  The  O  of  Giotto 
could  not  help  being  a  perfect  round,  and  the  verse  of  Long 
fellow  is  always  perfect  in  const ruj 

e  worked  in  dial  bfrnpTe  and  natural  way  which  char 
acterizes  the  master.  But  it  is  one  thing  to  be  simple 
through  poverty  of  intellect,  and  another  thing  to  be  simple 
by  repression  of  all  redundancy  and  overstatement ;  one 
thing  to  be  natural  through  ignorance  of  all  rules,  and 
another  to  have  made  a  second  nature  out  of  the  sovereign 
rules  of  art.  In  respect  of  this  simplicity  and  naturalness, 
his  style  is  in  strong  contrast  to  that  of  many  writers  of  our 
time.  There  is  no  straining  for  effect,  there  is  no  torturing 
of  rhythm  for  novel  patterns,  no  wearisome  iteration  of 
petted  words,  no  inelegant  clipping  of  syllables  to  meet  the 
exigencies  of  a  verse ;  no  affected  archaism,  rarely  any  lib 
erty  taken  with  language,  unless  it  may  be  in  the  form  of  a 
few  words  in  the  translation  of  Dante.  I  will  not  except 


11U\ 

itf 

\/  cou 


Tributes  to  Longfellow.  15 

from  these  remarks  the  singular  and  original  form  which  he 
gave  to  his  poem  of  "  Hiawatha,"  —  a  poem  with  a  curious 
history  in  many  respects.  Suddenly  and  immensely  popular 
in  this  country,  greatly  admired  by  many  foreign  critics, 
imitated  with  perfect  ease  by  any  clever  schoolboy,  serving 
as  a  model  for  metrical  advertisements,  made  fun  of,  sneered 
at,  abused,  admired,  but,  at  any  rate,  a  picture  full  of  pleas 
ing  fancies  and  melodious  cadences.  The  very  names  are 
jewels  which  the  most  fastidious  muse  might  be  proud  to 
wear.  Coming  from  the  realm  of  the  Androscoggin  and 
of  Moosetukmaguntuk,  how  could  he  have  found  two  such 
delicious  names  as  Hiawatha  and  Minnehaha?  The  eight- 
syllable  trochaic  verse  of  "  Hiawatha,"  like  the  eight-syllable 
iambic  verse  of  "  The  Lady  of  the  Lake,"  and  others  of  Scott's 
poems,  has  a  fatal  facility,  which  I  have  elsewhere  endeav 
ored  to  explain  on  physiological  principles.  The  recital  of 
each  line  uses  up  the  air  of  one  natural  expiration,  so  that 
we  read,  as  we  naturally  do,  eighteen  or  twenty  lines  in  a 
minute,  without  disturbing  the  normal  rhythm  of  breathing, 
which  is  also  eighteen  or  twenty  breaths  to  the  minute. 
The  standing  objection  to  this  is,  that  it  makes  the  octo 
syllabic  verse  too  easy  writing  and  too  slipshod  reading. 
Yet  in  this  most  frequently  criticised  composition  the  poet 
has  shown  a  subtle  sense  of  the  requirements  of  his  simple 
story  of  a  primitive  race,  in  choosing  the  most  fluid  of 
measures,  that  lets  the  thought  run  through  it  in  easy 
sing-song,  such  as  oral  tradition  would  be  sure  to  find  on 
the  lips  of  the  story-tellers  of  the  wigwam.  Although  Long 
fellow  was  not  fond  of  metrical  contortions  and  acrobatic 
achievements,  he  well  knew  the  effects  of  skilful  variation 


1 6  Massachusetts  Historical  Society. 

in  the  forms  of  verse  and  well-managed  refrains  or  repeti 
tions.  In  one  of  his  very  earliest  poems,  —  "  Pleasant  it 
was  when  Woods  were  Green,"  —  the  dropping  a  syllable 
from  the  last  line  is  an  agreeable  surprise  to  the  ear,  expect 
ing  only  the  common  monotony  of  scrupulously  balanced 
lines.  In  "Excelsior"  the  repetition  of  the  aspiring  excla 
mation  which  gives  its  name  to  the  poem,  lifts  every  stanza 
a  step  higher  than  the  one  which  preceded  it.  In  the  "  Old 
Clock  on  the  Stair,"  the  solemn  words,  "  Forever,  never, 
never,  forever,"  give  wonderful  effectiveness  to  that  most 
impressive  poem. 

All  his  art,  all  his  learning,  all  his  melody,  cannot  account 
for  his  extraordinary  popularity,  not  only  among  his  own 
countrymen  and  those  who  in  other  lands  speak  the  lan 
guage  in  which  he  wrote,  but  in  foreign  realms,  where  he 
could  only  be  read  through  the  ground  glass  of  a  translation. 
It  was  in  his  choice  of  subjects  that  one  source  of  the  public 
favor  with  which  his  writings,  more  especially  his  poems, 
were  received,  obviously  lay.  A  poem,  to  be  widely  popular, 
must  deal  with  thoughts  and  emotions  that  belong  to  com 
mon,  not  exceptional  character,  conditions,  interests.  The 
most  popular  of  all  books  are  those  which  meet  the  spiritual 
needs  of  mankind  most  powerfully,  such  works  as  "  The 
Imitation  of  Christ "  and  "  Pilgrim's  Progress."  I  suppose 
if  the  great  multitude  of  readers  were  to  render  a  decision 
as  to  which  of  Longfellow's  poems  they  most  valued,  the 
"  Psalm  of  Life  "  would  command  the  largest  number.  This 
is  a  brief  homily  enforcing  the  great  truths  of  duty,  and  of 
our  relation  to  the  unseen  world.  Next  in  order  would 
very  probably  come  "Excelsior,"  a  poem  that  springs  up- 


Tributes  to  Longfellow.  17 

ward  like  a  flame  and  carries  the  soul  up  with  it  in  its 
aspiration  for  the  unattainable  ideal.  If  this  sounds  like  a 
trumpet-call  to  the  fiery  energies  of  youth,  not  less  does  the 
still  small  voice  of  that  most  sweet  and  tender  poem,  "  Res 
ignation,"  appeal  to  the  sensibilities  of  those  who  have  lived 
long  enough  to  have  known  the  bitterness  of  such  a  be 
reavement  as  that  out  of  which  grew  the  poem.  Or  take  a 
poem  before  referred  to,  "  The  Old  Clock  on  the  Stair," 
and  in  it  we  find  the  history  of  innumerable  households  told 
in  relating  the  history  of  one,  and  the  solemn  burden  of  the 
song  repeats  itself  to  thousands  of  listening  readers,  as  if 
the  beat  of  the  pendulum  were  throbbing  at  the  head  of 
every  staircase.  Such  poems  as  these  —  and  there  are  many 
more  of  not  unlike  character  —  are  the  foundation  of  that 
universal  acceptance  his  writings  obtain  among  all  classes. 
But  for  these  appeals  to  universal  sentiment,  his  readers 
would  have  been  confined  to  a  comparatively  small  circle  of 
educated  and  refined  readers.  There  are  thousands  and 
tens  of  thousands  who  are  familiar  with  what  we  might  call 
his  household  poems,  who  have  never  read  the  "Spanish 
Student,"  "  The  Golden  Legend,"  "  Hiawatha,"  or  even 
"  Evangeline."  Again,  ask  the  first  schoolboy  you  meet 
which  of  Longfellow's  poems  he  likes  best,  and  he  will  be 
very  likely  to  answer,  "  Paul  Revere's  Ride."  When  he  is  a 
few  years  older  he  might  perhaps  say,  "  The  Building  of  the 
Ship,"  that  admirably  constructed  poem,  beginning  with  the 
literal  description,  passing  into  the  higher  region  of  senti 
ment  by  the  most  natural  of  transitions,  and  ending  with 
the  noble  climax,  — 

"  Thou,  too,  sail  on,  O  ship  of  state," 
3 


1 8  Massachusetts  Historical  Society. 

which  has  become  the  classical  expression  of  patriotic  emo 
tion. 

Nothing  lasts  like  a  coin  and  a  lyric.  Long  after  the 
dwellings  of  men  have  disappeared,  when  their  temples  are 
4n  ruins  and  all  their  works  of  art  are  shattered,  the  plough 
man  strikes  an  earthen  vessel  holding  the  golden  and 
silver  disks,  on  which  the  features  of  a  dead  monarch,  with 
emblems  it  may  be,  betraying  the  beliefs  or  the  manners, 
the  rudeness  or  the  finish  of  art  and  all  which  this  implies, 
survive  an  extinct  civilization.  Pope  has  expressed  this  with 
his  usual  Horatian  felicity,  in  the  letter  to  Addison,  on  the 
publication  of  his  little  "  Treatise  on  Coins,"  — 

"  A  small  Euphrates  through  the  piece  is  rolled, 
And  little  eagles  wave  their  wings  in  gold." 

Conquerors  and  conquered  sink  in  common  oblivion  ;  tri 
umphal  arches,  pageants  the  world  wonders  at,  all  that 
trumpeted  itself  as  destined  to  an  earthly  immortality  pass 
away ;  the  victor  of  a  hundred  battles  is  dust ;  the  parch 
ments  or  papyrus  on  which  his  deeds  were  written  are 
shrivelled  and  decayed  and  gone,  — 

"And  all  his  triumphs  shrink  into  a  coin." 

So  it  is  with  a  lyric  poem.  One  happy  utterance  of  some 
emotion  or  expression,  which  comes  home  to  all,  may  keep 
a  name  remembered  when  the  race  to  which  the  singer 
belonged  is  lost  sight  of.  The  cradle-song  of  Danae  to  her 
infant  as  they  tossed  on  the  waves  in  the  imprisoning  chest, 
has  made  the  name  of  Simonides  immortal.  Our  own  Eng 
lish  literature  abounds  with  instances  which  illustrate  the 
same  fact  so  far  as  the  experience  of  a  few  generations  extends. 


Tributes  to  Longfellow.  19 

And  I  think  we  may  venture  to  say  that  some  of  the  shorter 
poems  of  Longfellow  must  surely  reach  a  remote  posterity, 
and  be  considered  then,  as  now,  ornaments  to  English  litera 
ture.  We  may  compare  them  with  the  best  short  poems 
of  the  language  without  fearing  that  they  will  suffer.  Scott, 
cheerful,  wholesome,  unreflective,  should  be  read  in  the 
open  air ;  Byron,  the  poet  of  malcontents  and  cynics,  in  a 
prison  cell ;  Burns,  generous,  impassioned,  manly,  social,  in 
the  tavern  hall ;  Moore,  elegant,  fastidious,  full  of  melody, 
scented  with  the  volatile  perfume  of  the  Eastern  gardens,  in 
which  his  fancy  revelled,  is  pre-eminently  the  poet  of  the 
drawing-room  and  the  piano ;  Longfellow,  thoughtful,  musi 
cal,  home-loving,  busy  with  the  lessons  of  life,  which  he  was 
ever  studying,  and  loved  to  teach  others,  finds  his  charmed 
circle  of  listeners  by  the  fireside.  His  songs,  which  we 
might  almost  call  sacred  ones,  rarely  if  ever  get  into  the 
hymn-books.  They  are  too  broadly  human  to  suit  the 
specialized  tastes  of  the  sects,  which  often  think  more  of  their 
differences  from  each  other  than  of  the  common  ground  on 
which  they  can  agree.  Shall  we  think  less  of  our  poet 
because  he  so  frequently  aimed  in  his  verse  not  simply  to . 
please,  but  also  to  impress  some  elevating  thought  on  the 
minds  of  his  readers  ?  The  Psalms  of  King  David  are  burn 
ing  with  religious  devotion  and  full  of  weighty  counsel,  but 
they  are  not  less  valued,  certainly,  than  the  poems  of  Omar 
Khayam,  which  cannot  be  accused  of  too  great  a  tendency 
to  find  a  useful  lesson  in  their  subject.  Dennis,  the  famous 
critic,  found  fault  with  the  "  Rape  of  the  Lock  "  because  it 
had  no  moral.  It  is  not  necessary  that  a  poem  should  carry 
a  moral,  any  more  than  that  a  picture  of  a  Madonna  should 


2O  Massachusetts  Historical  Society. 

always  be  an  altar-piece.  The  poet  himself  is  the  best 
judge  of  that  in  each  particular  case.  In  that  charming 
little  poem  of  Wordsworth's,  ending,  — 

"And  then  my  heart  with  rapture  thrills 
And  dances  with  the  daffodils," 

we  do  not  ask  for  anything  more  than  the  record  of  the 
impression  which  is  told  so  simply,  and  which  justifies  itself 
by  the  way  in  which  it  is  told.  But  who  does  not  feel 
with  the  poet  that  the  touching  story,  "  Hartleap  Well," 
must  have  its  lesson  brought  out  distinctly,  to  give  a  fitting 
close  to  the  narrative  ?  Who  would  omit  those  two  lines  ?  — 

"  Never  to  blend  our  pleasure  or  our  pride 
With  sorrow  of  the  meanest  thing  that  lives." 

No  poet  knew  better  than  Longfellow  how  to  impress  a 
moral  without  seeming  to  preach.  Didactic  verse,  as  such, 
is,  no  doubt,  a  formidable  visitation,  but  a  cathedral  has  its 
lesson  to  teach  as  well  as  a  schoolhouse.  These  beautiful 
medallions  of  verse  which  Longfellow  has  left  us  might 
possibly  be  found  fault  with  as  conveying  too  much  useful 
and  elevating  truth  in  their  legends  ;  having  the  unartistic 
aim  of  being  serviceable  as  well  as  delighting  by  their 
beauty.  Let  us  leave  such  comment  to  the  critics  who 
cannot  handle  a  golden  coin,  fresh  from  the  royal  mint, 
without  clipping  its  edges  and  stamping  their  own  initials 
on  its  face. 

Of  the  longer  poems  of  our  chief  singer,  I  should  not 
hesitate  to  select  "  Evangeline  "  as  the  masterpiece,  and  I 
think  the  general  verdict  of  opinion  would  confirm  my 
choice.  The  German  model  which  it  follows  in  its  measure 


Tributes  to  Longfellow.  21 

and  the  character  of  its  story  was  itself  suggested  by  an 
earlier  idyl.  If  Dorothea  was  the  mother  of  Evangeline, 
Luise  was  the  mother  of  Dorothea.  And  what  a  beautiful 
creation  is  the  Acadian  maiden  !  From  the  first  line  of  the 
poem,  from  its  first  words,  we  read  as  we  would  float  down 
a  broad  and  placid  river,  murmuring  softly  against  its  banks, 
heaven  over  it  and  the  glory  of  the  unspoiled  wilderness  all 
around, 

"  This  is  the  forest  primeval." 

The  words  are  already  as  familiar  as 


or 

"  Arma  virumque  cano." 

The  hexameter  has  been  often  criticised,  but  I  do  not 
believe  any  other  measure  could  have  told  that  lovely  story 
with  such  effect,  as  we  feel  when  carried  along  the  tranquil 
current  of  these  brimming,  slow-moving,  soul-satisfying  lines. 
Imagine  for  one  moment  a  story  like  this  minced  into  octo 
syllabics.  The  poet  knows  better  than  his  critics  the  length 
of  step  which  best  befits  his  muse. 

I  will  not  take  up  your  time  with  any  further  remarks 
upon  writings  so  well  known  to  all.  By  the  poem  I  have 
last  mentioned,  and  by  his  lyrics,  or  shorter  poems,  I  think 
the  name  of  Longfellow  will  be  longest  remembered.  What 
ever  he  wrote,  whether  in  prose  or  poetry,  bore  always  the 
marks  of  the  finest  scholarship,  the  purest  taste,  fertile  im 
agination,  a  sense  of  the  music  of  words,  and  a  skill  in  bring 
ing  it  out  of  our  English  tongue,  which  hardly  more  than 
one  of  his  contemporaries  who  write  in  that  language  can 
be  said  to  equal. 


22  Massachusetts  Historical  Society. 

The  saying  of  Buffon,  that  the  style  is  the  man  himself, 
or  of  the  man  himself,  as  some  versions  have  it,  was  never 
truer  than  in  the  case  of  our  beloved  poet.  Let  us  under 
stand  by  style  all  that  gives  individuality  to  the  expression 
of  a  writer;  and  in  the  subjects,  the  handling,  the  spirit  and 
aim  of  his  poems,  we  see  the  reflex  of  a  personal  character 
which  made  him  worthy  of  that  almost  unparalleled  homage 
which  crowned  his  noble  life.  Such  a  funeral  procession 
as  attended  him  in  thought  to  his  resting-place  has  never 
joined  the  train  of  mourners  that  followed  the  hearse  of  a 
poet, — could  we  not  say  of  any  private  citizen  ?  And  we 
all  feel  that  no  tribute  could  be  too  generous,  too  universal, 
to  the  union  of  a  divine  gift  with  one  of  the  loveliest  of 
human  characters. 

Dr.  Holmes  was  followed  by  Professor  CHARLES  ELIOT  NORTON, 
who  arose  and  said,  — 

REMARKS   OF   PROFESSOR   NORTON. 

I  could  wish  that  this  were  a  silent  meeting.  There  is  no 
need  of  formal  commemorative  speech  to-day,  for  all  the 
people  of  the  land,  the  whole  English-speaking  race,  —  and 
not  they  alone,  —  mourn  our  friend  and  poet.  Never  was 
poet  so  mourned,  for  never  was  poet  so  beloved. 

There  is  nothing  of  lamentation  in*  our  mourning.  He 
has  not  been  untimely  taken.  His  life  was  "  prolonged  with 
many  years,  happy  and  famous."  Death  came  to  him  in 
good  season,  or  ever  the  golden  bowl  was  broken,  or  the 
pitcher  broken  at  the  cistern.  Desire  had  but  lately  failed. 


Tributes  to  Longfellow.  23 

Life  was  fair  to  him  almost  to  its  end.  On  his  seventy- 
fourth  birthday,  a  little  more  than  a  year  ago,  with  his  family 
and  a  few  friends  round  his  dinner  table,  he  said,  "  There 
seems  to  me  a  mistake  in  the  order  of  the  years:  I  can 
hardly  believe  that  the  four  should  not  precede  the  seven." 
But  in  the  year  that  followed  he  experienced  the  pains  and 
languor  and  weariness  of  age.  There  was  no  complaint  — 
the  sweetness  of  his  nature  was  invincible. 

On  one  of  the  last  times  that  I  saw  him,  as  I  entered  his 
familiar  study  on  a  beautiful  afternoon  of  this  past  winter, 
I  said  to  him,  "  I  hope  this  is  a  good  day  for  you  ? "  He 
replied,  with  a  pleasant  smile,  "  Ah !  there  are  no  good  days 
now."  Happily,  the  evil  days  were  not  to  be  many.  .  .  . 

The  accord  between  the  character  and  life  of  Mr.  Long- 
fellow  and  his  poems  was  complete.  His  poetry  touched 
the  hearts  of  his  readers  because  it  was  the  sincere  expres 
sion  of  his  own.  The  sweetness,  the  gentleness,  the.  grace, 
the  purity  of  his  verse  were  the  image  of  his  own  soul.  But 
beautiful  and  ample  as  this  expression  of  himself  was,  it 
fell  short  of  the  truth.  The  man  was  more  and  better  than 
the  poet. 

Intimate,  however,  as  was  the  concord  between  the  poet 
and  his  poetry,  there  was  much  in  him  to  which  he  never 
gave  utterance  in  words.  He  was  a  man  of  deep  reserves. 
He  kept  the  holy  of  holies  within  himself  inviolable  and 
secluded.  Seldom  does  he  admit  his  readers  to  even  its 
outward  precincts.  The  deepest  experiences  of  life  are  too 
sacred  to  be  shared  with  any  one  whatsoever.  "  There  are 
things  of  which  I  may  not  speak,"  he  says  in  one  of  the 
most  personal  of  his  poems. 


24  Massachusetts  Historical  Society. 

"  Whose  hand  shall  dare  to  open  and  explore 
Those  volumes  closed  and  clasped  forevermore  ? 
Not  mine.     With  reverential  feet  I  pass." 

It  was  the  felicity  of  Mr.  Longfellow  to  share  the  senti 
ment  and  emotion  of  his  coevals,  and  to  succeed  in  giving 
to  them  their  apt  poetic  expression.  It  was  not  by  depth 
of  thought  or  by  original  views  of  nature  that  he  won  his 
place  in  the  world's  regard ;  but  it  was  by  sympathy  with 
the  feelings  common  to  good  men  and  women  everywhere, 
and  by  the  simple,  direct,  sincere,  and  delicate  expression 
of  them,  that  he  gained  the  affection  of  mankind. 

He  was  fortunate  in  the  time  of  his  birth.  He  grew  up 
in  the  morning  of  our  republic.  He  shared  in  the  cheer 
fulness  of  the  early  hour,  in  its  hopefulness,  its  confidence. 
The  years  of  his  youth  and  early  manhood  coincided  with 
an  exceptional  moment  of  national  life,  in  which  a  pros 
perous  and  unembarrassed  democracy  was  learning  its  own 
capacities,  and  was  beginning  to  realize  its  large  and  novel 
resources;  in  which  the  order  of  society  was  still  simple 
and  humane.  He  became,  more  than  any  one  else,  the 
voice  of  this  epoch  of  national  progress,  an  epoch  of  unex 
ampled  prosperity  for  the  masses  of  mankind  in  our  new 
world,  prosperity  from  which  sprang  a  sense,  more  general 
and  deeper  than  had  ever  before  been  felt,  of  human  kind 
ness  and  brotherhood.  But,  even  to  the  prosperous,  life 
brings  its  inevitable  burden.  Trial,  sorrow,  misfortune,  are 
not  to  be  escaped  by  the  happiest  of  men.  The  deepest 
experiences  of  each  individual  are  the  experiences  common 
to  the  whole  race.  And  it  is  this  double  aspect  of  American 
life  —  its  novel  and  happy  conditions,  with  the  genial  spirit 


Tributes  to  Longfellow.  25 

resulting  from  them,  and,  at  the  same  time,  its  subjection 
to  the  old,  absolute,  universal  laws  of  existence  —  that  finds 
its  mirror  and  manifestation  in  Longfellow's  poetry. 

No  one  can  read  his  poetry  without  a  conviction  of  the 
simplicity,  tenderness,  and  humanity  of  the  poet.  And  we 
who  were  his  friends  know  how  these  qualities  shone  in 
his  daily  conversation.  Praise,  applause,  flattery,  —  and  no 
man  ever  was  exposed  to  more  of  them,  —  never  touched 
him  to  harm  him.  He  walked  through  their  flames  un 
scathed,  as  Dante  through  the  fires  of  purgatory.  His 
modesty  was  perfect.  He  accepted  the  praise  as  he  would 
have  accepted  any  other  pleasant  gift,  —  glad  of  it  as  an 
expression  of  good  will,  but  without  personal  elation.  In 
deed,  he  had  too  much  of  it,  and  often  in  an  absurd  form, 
not  to  become  at  times  weary  of  what  his  own  fame  and 
virtues  brought  upon  him.  But  his  kindliness  did  not 
permit  him  to  show  his  weariness  to  those  who  did  but 
burden  him  with  their  admiration.  It  was  the  penalty  of 
his  genius,  and  he  accepted  it  with  the  pleasantest  temper 
and  a  humorous  resignation.  Bores  of  all  nations,  espe 
cially  of  our  own,  persecuted  him.  His  long-suffering  pa 
tience  was  a  wonder  to  his  friends.  It  was,  in  truth,  the 
sweetest  charity.  No  man  was  ever  before  so  kind  to  these 
moral  mendicants.  One  day  I  ventured  to  remonstrate 
with  him  on  his  endurance  of  the  persecutions  of  one  of 
the  worst  of  the  class,  who  to  lack  of  modesty  added  lack 
of  honesty,  —  a  wretched  creature,  —  and  when  I  had  done, 
he  looked  at  me  with  a  pleasant,  reproving,  humorous  glance, 
and  said,  "  Charles,  who  would  be  kind  to  him  if  I  were 
not?  "  It  was  enough.  He  was  helped  by  a  gift  of  humor, 


26  Massachusetts  Historical  Society. 

which,  though  seldom  displayed  in  his  poems,  lighted  up  his 
talk  and  added  a  charm  to  his  intercourse.  He  was  the 
most  gracious  of  men  in  his  own  home;  he  was  fond  of 
the  society  of  his  friends,  and  the  company  that  gathered 
in  his  study  or  round  his  table  took  its  tone  from  his  own 
genial,  liberal,  cultivated,  and  refined  nature. 

"With  loving  breath  of  all  the  winds  his  name 

Is  blown  about  the  world ;  but  to  his  friends 
A  sweeter  secret  hides  behind  his  fame, 

And  love  steals  shyly  through  the  loud  acclaim 
To  murmur  a  God  bless  you!  and  there  ends." 

His  verse,  his  fame,  are  henceforth  the  precious  posses 
sions  of  the  people  whom  he  loved  so  well.  They  will 
be  among  the  effective  instruments  in  shaping  the  future 
character  of  the  nation.  His  spirit  will  continue  to  soften, 
to  refine,  to  elevate  the  hearts  of  men.  He  will  be  the 
beloved  friend  of  future  generations  as  he  has  been  of  his 
own.  His  desire  will  be  gratified, — 

"And  in  your  life  let  my  remembrance  linger, 
As  something  not  to  trouble  and  disturb  it, 
But  to  complete  it,  adding  life  to  life. 
And  if  at  times  beside  the  evening  fire 
You  see  my  face  among  the  other  faces, 
Let  it  not  be  regarded  as  a  ghost 
That  haunts  your  house,  but  as  a  guest  that  loves  you, 
Nay,  even  as  one  of  your  own  family, 
Without  whose  presence  there  were  something  wanting. 
I  have  no  more  to  say." 


Mr.  WILLIAM  EVERETT  spoke  with  much  force  of  the  pre 
eminent  gifts  of  Mr.  Longfellow,  and,  although  not  given  to 


Tributes  to  Longfellow.  27 

comparisons,  he  could  not  help  putting  his  "  Ship  of  State  " 
alongside  of  Horace's  passionate  burst  of  song  beginning 
"  O  navis ! "  After  reciting  the  two,  Mr.  Everett  declared 
that  our  singer  had  encountered  the  greatest  lyric  poet  of 
Rome  on  his  own  ground,  and,  grappling  with  him,  had 
fairly  thrown  him. 

The  resolution  was  unanimously  adopted  by  a  standing  vote. 


RALPH     WALDO     EMERSON. 


PHOTOGRAPHED  IN  1855  HY  J.  J.  HAWKS,  BOSTON. 


RALPH    WALDO    EMERSON, 

BORN    MAY  25,    1803. 
DIED  APRIL  27,  1882. 


TRIBUTES   TO    EMERSON. 


THE  regular  monthly  meeting  of  the  Massachusetts  Historical 
Society  was  held  on  Thursday,  May  n,  1882,  at  three  o'clock,  P.M. 
In  the  absence  of  the  president,  the  Hon.  Robert  C.  Winthrop,  who 
is  spending  the  summer  in  Europe,  the  senior  vice-president,  George 
E.  Ellis,  D.D.,  occupied  the  chair.  The  minutes  of  the  April  meet 
ing,  at  which  tributes  were  paid  to  Mr.  Longfellow,  were  read  by  the 
Rev.  E.  G.  Porter,  recording  secretary  pro  tern.  The  librarian, 
Mayor  Green,  read  the  monthly  list  of  donors  to  the  Library.  The 
corresponding  secretary,  Mr.  Justin  Winsor,  made  his  report,  after 
which  Vice- President  ELLIS  gave  the  following  address :  — 


REMARKS   OF   DR.  ELLIS. 

MANY  of  us  who  meet  in  this  library  to-day  are  doubtless 
recalling  vividly  the  memory  of  the  impressive  scene  here 
when,  fifteen  months  ago,  Mr.  Emerson,  appearing  among 
us  for  the  last  time,  read  his  characteristic  paper  upon 
Thomas  Carlyle.  It  was  the  very  hour  on  which  the 
remains  of  that  remarkable  man  were  committed  to  his 
Scotch  grave.  There  was  much  to  give  the  occasion  here 
a  deep  and  tender  interest.  We  could  not  but  feel  that  it 


32  Massachusetts  Historical  Society. 

was  the  last  utterance  to  which  \ve  should  listen  from  our 
beloved  and  venerated  associate,  if  not,  as  it  proved  to  be, 
the  last  of  his  presence  among  us.  So  we  listened  greedily 
and  fondly.  The  paper  had  been  lying  in  manuscript  more 
than  thirty  years,  but  it  had  kept  its  freshness  and  fidelity. 
The  matter  of  it,  its  tone  and  utterance,  were  singularly 
suggestive.  Not  the  least  of  the  crowding  reflections  with 
which  we  listened  was  the  puzzling  wonder,  to  some  of  us, 
as  to  the  tie  of  sympathy  and  warm  personal  attachment, 
of  nearly  half  a  century's  continuance,  between  the  serene 
and  gentle  spirit  of  our  poet-philosopher  and  the  stormy 
and  aggressive  spirit  of  Mr.  Carlyle. 

There  are  those  immediately  to  follow  me  who,  with  acute 
and  appreciative  minds,  in  closeness  of  intercourse  and  sym 
pathy  with  Mr.  Emerson,  will  interpret  to  you  the  form  and 
significance  of  his  genius,  the  richness  of  his  fine  and  rare 
endowments,  and  account  to  you  for  the  admiring  and  loving 
estimate  of  his  power  and  influence  and  world-wide  fame 
in  the  lofty  realms  of  thought,  with  insight  and  vision  and 
revealings  of  the  central  mysteries  of  being.  They  must 
share  largely  in  those  rare  gifts  of  his  who  undertake  to  be 
the  channel  of  them  from  him  to  others.  For  it  is  no  secret, 
but  a  free  confession,  that  the  quality,  methods,  and  fruits  of 
his  genius  are  so  peculiar,  unique,  obscure,  and  remote  from 
the  appreciation  of  a  large  class  of  those  of  logical,  argu 
mentative,  and  prosaic  minds,  as  to  invest  them  with  the 
ill-understood  and  the  inexplicable.  He  was  signally  one 
of  those,  rare  in  our  race,  in  the  duality  of  our  human  ele 
mentary  composition,  in  whom  the  dust  of  the  ground  con 
tributed  its  least  proportion,  while  the  ethereal  inspiration 
from  above  contributed  the  greatest. 


Tributes  to  Emerson.  33 

The  words  which  I  would  add,  prompted  as  in  keeping 
with  this  place  and  occasion,  shall  be  in  reminiscence  of 
years  long  past.  Those  whose  memories  are  clear  and 
strong,  and  who  forty-five  years  ago  in  their  professional, 
literary,  or  social  fellowships  were  intent  upon  all  that 
quickened  thought  and  converse  in  this  peculiar  centre  of 
Boston  and  its  neighborhoods,  will  recall  with  what  can 
hardly  be  other  than  pensive  retrospects  the  charms  and 
fervors,  the  surprises,  and  perhaps  the  shocks,  certainly  the 
bewilderment  and  the  apprehension,  which  signalled  the 
announcement  here  of  what  was  called  Transcendentalism. 
Though  the  word  was  from  the  first  wrongfully  applied, 
there  was  an  aptness  in  its  use,  as  in  keeping  with  the 
mistiness  and  cloudiness  of  the  dispensation  to  which  it 
was  attached.  The  excitement  here  was  adjusted  to  the 
size,  the  composition,  the  tone  and  spirit,  and  the  unas- 
similated  elements  of  this  community.  The  movement  had 
the  quickening  zest  of  mystery.  It  was  long  before  those 
who  were  not  a  part  of  it  could  reach  to  any  intelligible 
idea  of  what  it  might  signify,  or  promise,  or  portend.  There 
were  a  score,  a  hundred,  persons  craving  to  have  explained 
to  them  what  it  all  meant,  to  each  one  who  seemed  ready 
or  able  in  volunteering  to  throw  light  upon  it.  And  this 
intended  light  was  often  but  an  adumbration.  Mr.  Emerson 
gained  nothing  from  his  interpreters.  Nor  does  he  now. 
The  key  which  they  offered  did  not  fit  the  wards  of  the  lock. 
The  vagueness  of  the  oracle  seemed  to  be  deepened  when 
repeated  by  any  other  lips  than  those  which  gave  it  first 
utterance.  In  most  of  the  recent  references  in  the  news 
papers  and  magazines  to  the  opening  of  Mr.  Emerson's 

5 


34  Massachusetts  Historical  Society. 

career  in  high  philosophy,  emphatic  statements  are  made 
as  to  the  ridicule  and  satire  and  banter  evoked  by  the  first 
utterances  of  this  transcendentalism.  It  is  not  impressed 
upon  my  memory  that  any  of  this  triviality  was  ever  spent 
upon  Mr.  Emerson  himself.  The  modest,  serene,  unaggres- 
sive  attitude,  and  personal  phenomena  of  bearing  and  utter 
ance  which  were  so  winningly  characteristic  of  his  presence 
and  speech,  as  he  dropped  the  sparkles  and  nuggets  of  his 
fragmentary  revelations,  were  his  ample  security  against  all 
such  disrespect.  The  fun,  as  I  remember,  was  spent  upon 
the  first  circle  of  repeaters,  and  so-called  disciples,  a  small 
but  lively  company  of  both  sexes,  who  seemed  to  patent 
him  as  their  oracle,  as  an  inner  fellowship  who  would  be 
the  medium  between  him  and  the  unillumined.  Nor  was 
it  strange  that  explanations,  or  demonstrative  and  argu 
mentative  expositions  of  the  Emersonian  philosophy  prof 
fered  by  its  interpreters  did  not  open  it  clearly  to  inquirers, 
inasmuch  as  he  himself  assured  us  that  it  was  not  to  be 
learned  or  tested  by  old-fashioned  familiar  methods.  I 
know  of  but  one  piece  from  his  pen  now  in  print,  and 
dating  from  the  first  year  of  his  publicity,  in  which  he 
appears,  not  in  self-defence  under  challenge,  —  for  he  never 
did  that,  —  but  in  attempted  and  baffled  self-exposition. 
Nor  have  lines  ever  been  written,  by  himself  or  by  his 
interpreters,  so  apt,  so  characteristic,  so  exquisitely  phrased 
and  toned,  so  exhaustively  descriptive  of  the  style  and 
spirit  of  his  philosophy  as  those  which  I  will  quote. 

The  younger  Henry  Ware,  whose  colleague  he  had  been 
during  his  brief  pastorship  of  a  church,  disturbed  by  some 
thing  in  a  discourse  which  Mr.  Emerson,  after  leaving  the 


Tributes  to  Emerson.  35 

pulpit,  had  delivered  in  Cambridge  in  1838,  had  preached  in 
the  College  chapel  a  sermon  dealing  in  part  with  a  position 
which  had  startled  himself  and  others  in  his  friend's  address, 
and,  in  part,  with  a  breeze  of  excitement  which  it  had  raised 
in  a  tinderish  community.  The  sermon  being  printed,  Mr. 
Ware  sent  a  copy  of  it  to  Mr.  Emerson,  with  a  letter,  which 
the  latter  says  "  was  right  manly  and  noble."  The  letter 
expressed  a  little  disturbance,  puzzle,  and  anxiety  of  mind, 
and  put  some  questions  hinting  at  desired  explanations  and 
arguments. 

In  reply  Mr  Emerson  interprets  himself  thus :  — 
"  If  the  sermon  assails  any  doctrines  of  mine,  —  perhaps 
I  am  not  so  quick  to  see  it  as  writers  generally,  —  certainly 
I  did  not  feel  any  disposition  to  depart  from  my  habitual 
contentment,  that  you  should  say  your  thought  whilst  I 
say  mine.  I  believe  I  must  tell  you  what  I  think  of  my 
new  position.  It  strikes  me  very  oddly  that  good  and  wise 
men  at  Cambridge  and  Boston  should  think  of  raising  me 
into  an  object  of  criticism.  I  have  always  been  —  from  my 
very  incapacity  of  methodical  writing  —  'a  chartered  liber 
tine/  free  to  worship  and  free  to  rail,  lucky  when  I  could 
make  myself  understood,  but  never  esteemed  near  enough 
to  the  institutions  and  mind  of  society  to  deserve  the  notice 
of  the  masters  of  literature  and  religion.  I  have  appre 
ciated  fully  the  advantages  of  my  position,  for  I  well  know 
that  there  is  no  scholar  less  able  or  willing  to  be  a  polemic. 
I  could  not  give  accounts  of  myself  if  challenged.  I  could 
not  possibly  give  you  one  of  the  '  arguments '  you  cruelly 
hint  at,  on  which  any  doctrine  of  mine  stands.  For  I  do  not 
know  what  arguments  mean,  in  reference  to  any  expression 


36  Massachusetts  Historical  Society. 

of  a  thought.  I  delight  in  telling  what  I  think ;  but,  if  you 
ask  me  how  I  dare  say  so,  or  why  it  is  so,  I  am  the  most 
helpless  of  mortal  men.  I  do  not  even  see  that  either  of 
these  questions  admits  of  an  answer.  So  that  in  the  present 
droll  posture  of  my  affairs,  when  I  see  myself  suddenly 
raised  into  the  importance  of  a  heretic,  I  am  very  uneasy 
when  I  advert  to  the  supposed  duties  of  such  a  personage, 
who  is  to  make  good  his  thesis  against  all  comers.  I  cer 
tainly  shall  do  no  such  thing.  I  shall  read  what  you  and 
other  good  men  write,  as  I  have  always  done,  —  glad  when 
you  speak  my  thoughts,  and  skipping  the  page  that  has 
nothing  for  me.  I  shall  go  on,  just  as  before,  seeing  what 
ever  I  can,  and  telling  what  I  see ;  and,  I  suppose,  with  the 
same  fortune  that  has  hitherto  attended  me,  —  the  joy  of 
finding  that  my  abler  and  better  brothers,  who  work  with 
the  sympathy  of  society,  loving  and  beloved,  do  now  and 
then  unexpectedly  confirm  my  perceptions,  and  find  my 
nonsense  is  only  their  own  thought  in  motley." 

No  one  in  comment,  essay,  or  criticism  upon  Mr.  Emerson 
has  improved  upon  his  own  revealing  of  his  philosophy  of 
intuition,  insight,  eye,  and  thought,  as  distinguished  from 
that  of  logic  and  argument.  It  needed  some  considerable 
lapse  of  time,  with  much  wondering,  questioning,  and  de 
bating  in  this  community,  to  clear  the  understanding,  that 
the  new  and  hopeful  message  brought  to  us  was  something 
like  this,  —  that  those  who  were  overfed,  or  starved,  or 
weaned  with  didactic,  prosaic  lessons  of  truth  for  life  and 
conduct,  through  formal  teaching,  by  reasoning,  arguings 
and  provings,  might  turn  to  their  own  inner  furnishings, 
to  their  thinkings  as  processes,  not  results,  and  to  the  free 


Tributes  to  Emerson.  37 

revealings  and  inspirings  from  without  as  interpreted  from 
within. 

But  whatever  was  the  baffling  secret  of  Mr.  Emerson's 
philosophy,  there  was  no  mystery  save  that  to  the  charm 
and  power  of  which  we  all  love  to  yield  ourselves,  in  the 
poise  and  repose  of  his  placid  spirit,  in  the  grace  and  felicity 
of  his  utterance,  in  the  crowding  of  sense  and  suggestive- 
ness  into  his  short,  terse  sentences,  in  his  high  Teachings 
for  all  truth  as  its  disciple,  and  in  the  persuasiveness  with 
which  he  communicated  to  others  what  was  disclosed  to 
him.  He  never  answered  to  a  challenge  by  apology  or 
controversy. 

At  the  conclusion  of  his  address,  Dr.  Ellis  read  the  following 
letter  from  Judge  HOAR  :  — 

LETTER  OF  THE  HON.  E.  R.  HOAR. 

CONCORD,  May  8,  1882. 

MY  DEAR  DR.  ELLIS,  —  I  find  that  it  will  be  out  of  my 
power  to  attend  the  meeting  of  the  Historical  Society  on 
Thursday  next,  and  I  am  sorry  to  lose  the  opportunity  of 
hearing  the  tributes  which  its  members  will  pay  to  the 
memory  of  Mr.  Emerson,  than  whose  name  none  more  wor 
thy  of  honor  is  found  on  its  roll.  His  place  in  literature, 
as  poet,  philosopher,  seer,  and  thinker,  will  find  much  more 
adequate  statement  than  any  which  I  could  offer.  But  there 
are  two  things  which  the  Proceedings  of  our  Society  may 
appropriately  record  concerning  him,  one  of  them  likely  to 
be  lost  sight  of  in  the  lustre  of  his  later  and  more  famous 
achievements,  and  the  other  of  a  quality  so  evanescent 


38  Massachusetts  Historical  Society. 

as  to  be  preserved  only  by  contemporary  evidence  and 
tradition. 

The  first  relates  to  his  address  in  September,  1835,  at 
the  celebration  of  the  two  hundredth  anniversary  of  the 
settlement  of  Concord;  which  seems  to  me  to  contain  the 
most  complete  and  exquisite  picture  of  the  origin,  history, 
and  peculiar  characteristics  of  a  New  England  town  that 
has  ever  been  produced. 

The  second  is  his  power  as  an  orator,  rare  and  peculiar, 
and  in  its  way  unequalled  among  our  cotemporaries.  Many 
of  us  can  recall  instances  of  it,  and  there  are  several  promi 
nent  in  my  recollection  ;  but  perhaps  the  most  striking  was 
his  address  at  the  Burns  centennial,  in  Boston,  on  the  25th 
of  January,  1859. 

The  company  that  he  addressed  was  a  queer  mixture. 
First,  there  were  the  Burns  club,  —  grave,  critical,  and  long 
headed  Scotchmen,  jealous  of  the  fame  of  their  countryman, 
and  doubtful  of  the  capacity  to  appreciate  him  in  men  of 
other  blood.  There  were  the  scholars  and  poets  of  Boston 
and  its  neighborhood,  and  professors  and  undergraduates 
from  Harvard  College.  Then  there  were  state  and  city 
officials,  aldermen  and  common  councilmen,  brokers  and 
bank  directors,  ministers  and  deacons,  doctors,  lawyers,  and 
"  carnal  self-seekers  "  of  every  grade. 

I  have  had  the  good  fortune  to  hear  many  of  the  chief 
orators  of  our  time,  among  them  Henry  Clay,  John  Quincy 
Adams,  Ogden  Hoffman,  S.  S.  Prentiss,  William  H.  Seward, 
Charles  Sumner,  Wendell  Phillips,  George  William  Curtis, 
some  of  the  great  preachers,  and  Webster,  Everett,  Choate, 
and  Winthrop  at  their  best.  But  I  never  witnessed  such 


Tributes  to  Emerson.  39 

an  effort  of  speech  upon  men  as  Mr.  Emerson  apparently 
then  attained.  It  reached  at  once  to  his  own  definition  of  elo 
quence.  —  "a  taking  sovereign  possession  of  the  audience/5 
He  had  uttered  but  a  few  sentences  before  he  seemed  to 
have  welded  together  the  whole  mass  of  discordant  material 
and  lifted  them  to  the  same  height  of  sympathy  and  passion. 
He  excited  them  to  smiles,  to  tears,  to  the  wildest  enthu 
siasm.  His  tribute  to  Burns  is  beautiful  to  read,  perhaps 
the  best  which  the  occasion  produced  on  either  side  of  the 
ocean.  But  the  clear  articulation,  the  ringing  emphasis, 
the  musical  modulation  of  tone  and  voice,  the  loftiness  of 
bearing,  and  the  radiance  of  his  face,  all  made  a  part  of 
the  consummate  charm.  When  he  closed,  the  company 
could  hardly  tolerate  any  other  speaker,  though  good  ones 
were  to  follow. 

I  am  confident  that  every  one  who  was  present  on  that 
evening  would  agree  with  me  as  to  the  splendor  of  that 
eloquence. 

Very  truly  yours, 

E.  R.  HOAR. 

Rev.  GEORGE  E.  ELLIS,  D.D., 

Vice-President  of  the  Massachusetts  Historical  Society. 

Dr.  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES  then  arose  and  addressed  the 
Society  as  follows  :  — 

ADDRESS  OF  DR.  HOLMES. 

It  is  a  privilege  which  any  of  us  may  claim,  as  we  pass 
each  of  these  last  and  newly  raised  mounds,  to  throw  our 
pebble  upon  the  cairn.  For  our  own  sakes  we  must  be 
indulged  in  the  gratification  of  paying  our  slender  tribute. 


4O  Massachusetts  Historical  Society. 

So  soon,  alas,  after  bidding  farewell  to  our  cherished  poet 
to  lose  the  earthly  presence  of  the  loftiest,  the  divinest  of 
our  thinkers!  The  language  of  eulogy  seemed  to  have 
exhausted  itself  in  celebrating  him  who  was  the  darling 
of  two  English  worlds,  the  singer  of  Acadian  and  Pilgrim 
and  Indian  story,  of  human  affections  and  aspirations,  of 
sweet,  wholesome  life  from  its  lullaby  to  its  requiem.  And 
now  we  hardly  know  what  measure  to  observe  in  our  praises 
of  him  who  was  singularly  averse  to  over-statement,  who 
never  listened  approvingly  to  flattery  when  living,  and  whose 
memory  asks  only  the  white  roses  of  truth  for  its  funeral 
garlands. 

The  work  of  his  life  is  before  us  all,  and  will  have  full 
justice  done  it  by  those  who  are  worthy  of  the  task  and 
equal  to  its  demands.  But,  as  out  of  a  score  of  photo 
graphs  each  gives  us  something  of  a  friend's  familiar  face, 
though  all  taken  together  do  not  give  us  the  whole  of  it, 
so  each  glimpse  of  reminiscence,  each  hint  of  momentary 
impression,  may  help  to  make  a  portrait  which  shall  remind 
us  of  the  original,  though  it  is,  at  best,  but  an  imperfect 
resemblance. 

When  a  life  so  exceptional  as  that  which  has  just  left  our 
earthly  companionship  appears  in  any  group  of  our  fellow- 
creatures,  we  naturally  ask  how  such  a  well-recognized  supe 
riority  came  into  being.  We  look  for  the  reason  of  such 
an  existence  among  its  antecedents,  some  of  which  we  can 
reach,  as,  for  instance,  the  characteristics  of  the  race,  the 
tribe,  the  family.  The  forces  of  innumerable  generations 
are  represented  in  the  individual,  more  especially  those  of 
the  last  century  or  two.  Involved  with  these,  inextricable, 


Tributes  to  Emerson.  41 

insoluble,  is  the  mystery  of  mysteries,  the  mechanism  of 
personality.  No  such  personality  as  this  which  was  lately- 
present  with  us  is  the  outcome  of  cheap  paternity  and 
shallow  motherhood. 

I  may  seem  to  utter  an  Hibernian  absurdity;  I  may 
recall  a  lively  couplet  which  has  often  brought  a  smile  at 
the  expense  of  our  good  city ;  I  may  —  I  hope  I  shall  not 
—  offend  the  guardians  of  ancient  formulae,  vigilant  still 
as  watch-dogs  over  the  bones  of  their  fleshless  symbols, 
but  I  must  be  permitted  to  say  that  I  believe  the  second 
birth  may  precede  that  which  we  consider  as  the  first.  The 
divine  renovation  which  changes  the  half-human  animal, 
the  cave-dweller,  the  cannibal,  into  the  servant  of  God,  the 
friend,  the  benefactor,  the  lawgiver  of  his  kind,  may,  I 
believe,  be  wrought  in  the  race  before  it  is  incarnated  in 
the  individual.  It  may  take  many  generations  of  chosen 
births  to  work  the  transformation,  but  what  the  old  chem 
ists  called  cohobation  is  not  without  its  meaning  for  vital 
chemistry ;  life  must  pass  through  an  alembic  of  gold  or  of 
silver  many  times  before  its  current  can  possibly  run  quite 
clear. 

A  New  Englander  has  a  right  to  feel  happy,  if  not  proud, 
if  he  can  quarter  his  coat-of-arms  with  the  bands  of  an 
ancestry  of  clergymen.  Eight  generations  of  ministers 
preceded  the  advent  of  this  prophet  of  our  time.  There 
is  no  better  flint  to  strike  fire  from  than  the  old  nodule 
of  Puritanism.  Strike  it  against  the  steel  of  self-asserting 
civil  freedom,  and  we  get  a  flash  and  a  flame  such  as  showed 
our  three-hilled  town  to  the  lovers  of  liberty  all  over  the 

world.     An  ancestry  of  ministers,  softened  out  of  their  old- 

6 


42  Massachusetts  Historical  Society. 

world  dogmas  by  the  same  influences  which  set  free  the 
colonies,  is  the  true  Brahminism  of  New  England. 

Children  of  the  same  parentage,  as  we  well  know,  do  not 
alike  manifest  the  best  qualities  belonging  to  the  race.  But 
those  of  the  two  brothers  of  Ralph  Waldo  Emerson  whom 
I  can  remember  were  of  exceptional  and  superior  natural 
endowments.  Edward,  next  to  him  in  order  of  birth,  was 
of  the  highest  promise,  only  one  evidence  of  which  was  his 
standing  at  the  head  of  his  college  class  at  graduation.  I 
recall  a  tender  and  most  impressive  tribute  of  Mr.  Everett's 
to  his  memory,  at  one  of  our  annual  Phi  Beta  Kappa  meet 
ings.  He  spoke  of  the  blow  which  had  jarred  the  strings 
of  his  fine  intellect  and  made  them  return  a  sound 

"  Like  sweet  bells  jangled  out  of  tune  and  harsh," 

in  the  saddened  tones  of  that  rich  sonorous  voice  still  thrill 
ing  in  the  ears  of  many  whose  hearing  is  dulled  for  all  the 
music,  all  the  eloquence  of  to-day. 

Of  Charles  Chauncy,  the  youngest  brother,  I  knew  some 
thing  in  my  college  days.  A  beautiful,  high-souled,  pure, 
exquisitely  delicate  nature  in  a  slight  but  finely  wrought 
mortal  frame,  he  was  for  me  the  very  ideal  of  an  embodied 
celestial  intelligence.  I  may  venture  to  mention  a  trivial 
circumstance,  because  it  points  to  the  character  of  his 
favorite  reading,  which  was  likely  to  be  guided  by  the 
same  tastes  as  his  brother's,  and  may  have  been  specially 
directed  by  him.  Coming  into  my  room  one  day,  he  took 
up  a  copy  of  Hazlitt's  British  Poets.  He  opened  it  to  the 
poem  of  Andrew  Marvell's,  entitled  "  The  Nymph  Com 
plaining  for  the  Death  of  her  Fawn,"  which  he  read  to 


Tributes  to  Emerson.  43 

me  with  delight  irradiating  his  expressive  features.  The 
lines  remained  with  me,  or  many  of  them,  from  that  hour,  — 

"  Had  it  lived  long,  it  would  have  been 
Lilies  without,  roses  within." 

I  felt  as  many  have  felt  after  being  with  his  brother,  Ralph 
Waldo,  that  I  had  entertained  an  angel  visitant.  The 
Fawn  of  Marvell's  imagination  survives  in  my  memory  as 
the  fitting  image  to  recall  this  beautiful  youth;  a  soul  glow 
ing  like  the  rose  of  morning  with  enthusiasm,  a  character 
white  as  the  lilies  in  its  purity. 

Such  was  the  family  nature  lived  out  to  its  full  develop 
ment  in  Ralph  Waldo  Emerson.  Add  to  this  the  special 
differentiating  quality,  indefinable  as  the  tone  of  a  voice, 
which  we  should  know  not  the  less,  from  that  of  every 
other  of  articulately  speaking  mortals,  and  we  have  the 
Emerson  of  our  recollections. 

A  person  who  by  force  of  natural  gifts  is  entitled  to  be 
called  a  personage  is  always  a  surprise  in  the  order  of  appear 
ances,  sometimes,  as  in  the  case  of  Shakespeare,  of  Goethe, 
a  marvel,  if  not  a  miracle.  The  new  phenomenon  has  to  be 
studied  like  the  young  growth  that  sprang  up  between  the 
stones  in  the  story  of  Picciola.  Is  it  a  common  weed,  or  a 
plant  with  virtues  and  beauties  of  its  own  ?  Is  it  a  crypto 
gam  that  can  never  flower,  or  shall  we  wait  and  see  it  blos 
som  by  and  by  ?  Is  it  an  endogen  or  an  exogen,  —  did  the 
seed  it  springs  from  drop  from  a  neighboring  bough,  or  was 
it  wafted  hither  on  the  wings  of  the  wind  from  some  far-off 
shore  ? 

Time  taught  us  what  to  make  of  this  human  growth.  It 
was  not  an  annual  or  a  biennial,  but  a  perennial ;  not  an  her- 


44  Massachusetts  Historical  Society. 

baceous  plant,  but  a  towering  tree ;  not  an  oak  or  an  elm 
like  those  around  it,  but  rather  a  lofty  and  spreading  palm, 
which  acclimated  itself  out  of  its  latitude,  as  the  little  group 
of  Southern  magnolias  has  done  in  the  woods  of  our  north 
ern  county  of  Essex.  For  Emerson's  was  an  Asiatic  mind, 
drawing  its  sustenance  partly  from  the  hard  soil  of  our 
New  England,  partly,  too,  from  the  air  that  has  known 
Himalaya  and  the  Ganges.  So  impressed  with  this  char 
acter  of  his  mind  was  Mr.  Burlingame,  as  I  saw  him,  after 
his  return  from  his  mission,  that  he  said  to  me,  in  a  freshet 
of  hyperbole,  which  was  the  overflow  of  a  channel  with  a 
thread  of  truth  running  in  it,  "  There  are  twenty  thousand 
Ralph  Waldo  Emersons  in  China." 

What  could  we  do  with  this  unexpected,  unprovided  for, 
unclassified,  half  unwelcome  new-comer,  who  had  been  for 
a  while  potted,  as  it  were,  in  our  Unitarian  cold  greenhouse, 
but  had  taken  to  growing  so  fast  that  he  was  lifting  off  its 
glass  roof  and  letting  in  the  hailstorms  ?  Here  was  a  pro 
test  that  outflanked  the  extreme  left  of  liberalism,  yet  so 
calm  and  serene  that  its  radicalism  had  the  accents  of  the 
gospel  of  peace.  Here  was  an  iconoclast  without  a  ham 
mer,  who  took  down  our  idols  from  their  pedestals  so  ten 
derly  that  it  seemed  like  an  act  of  worship. 

The  scribes  and  pharisees  made  light  of  his  oracular 
sayings.  The  lawyers  could  not  find  the  witnesses  to  sub 
poena  and  the  documents  to  refer  to  when  his  case  came 
before  them,  and  turned  him  over  to  their  wives  and  daugh 
ters.  The  ministers  denounced  his  heresies,  and  handled 
his  writings  as  if  they  were  packages  of  dynamite,  and  the 
grandmothers  were  as  much  afraid  of  his  new  teachings  as  old 


Tributes  to  Emerson.  45 

Mrs.  Piozzi  was  of  geology.  We  had  had  revolutionary  ora 
tors,  reformers,  martyrs ;  it  was  but  a  few  years  since  Abner 
Kneeland  had  been  sent  to  jail  for  expressing  an  opinion 
about  the  great  First  Cause ;  but  we  had  had  nothing  like 
this  man,  with  his  seraphic  voice  and  countenance,  his 
choice  vocabulary,  his  refined  utterance,  his  gentle  courage, 
which,  with  a  different  manner,  might  have  been  called 
audacity,  his  temperate  statement  of  opinions  which 
threatened  to  shake  the  existing  order  of  thought  like  an 
earthquake. 

His  peculiarities  of  style  and  of  thinking  became  fertile 
parents  of  mannerisms,  which  were  fair  game  for  ridicule 
as  they  appeared  in  his  imitators.  For  one  who  talks  like 
Emerson  or  like  Carlyle  soon  finds  himself  surrounded  by  a 
crowd  of  walking  phonographs,  who  mechanically  repro 
duce  his  mental  and  vocal  accents.  Emerson  was  before 
long  talking  in  the  midst  of  a  babbling  Simonetta  of  echoes, 
and  not  unnaturally  was  now  and  then  himself  a  mark  for 
the  small  shot  of  criticism.  He  had  soon  reached  that 
height  in  the  "  cold  thin  atmosphere  "  of  thought  where 

Vainly  the  fowler's  eye 
Might  mark  his  distant  flight  to  do  him  wrong. 

I  shall  add  a  few  words,  of  necessity  almost  epigram 
matic,  upon  his  work  and  character.  He  dealt  with  life,  and 
life  with  him  was  not  merely  this  particular  air-breathing 
phase  of  being,  but  the  spiritual  existence  which  included  it 
like  a  parenthesis  between  the  two  infinities.  He  wanted 
his  daily  draughts  of  oxygen  like  his  neighbors,  and  was  as 
thoroughly  human  as  the  plain  people  he  mentions  who  had 
successively  owned  or  thought  they  owned  the  house-lot  on 


46  Massachusetts  Historical  Society. 

which  he  planted  his  hearthstone.  But  he  was  at  home  no 
less  in  the  interstellar  spaces  outside  of  all  the  atmospheres. 
The  semi-materialistic  idealism  of  Milton  was  a  gross  and 
clumsy  medium  compared  to  the  imponderable  ether  of 
"  The  Oversoul "  and  the  unimaginable  vacuum  of  "  Brah 
ma."  He  followed  in  the  shining  and  daring  track  of  the 
Grains  homo  of  Lucretius  : 

"  Vivida  vis  animi  pervicit,  et  extra 
Processit  longe  flammantia  mcenia  mundi." 

It  always  seemed  to  me  as  if  he  looked  at  this  earth  very 
much  as  a  visitor  from  another  planet  would  look  upon  it. 
He  was  interested,  and  to  some  extent  curious  about  it, 
but  it  was  not  the  first  spheroid  he  had  been  acquainted 
with,  by  any  means.  I  have  amused  myself  with  comparing 
his  descriptions  of  natural  objects  with  those  of  the  Angel 
Raphael  in  the  seventh  book  of  Paradise  Lost.  Emerson 
talks  of  his  titmouse  as  Raphael  talks  of  his  emmet.  An 
gels  and  poets  never  deal  with  nature  after  the  manner  of 
those  whom  we  call  naturalists. 

To  judge  of  him  as  a  thinker,  Emerson  should  have  been 
heard  as  a  lecturer,  for  his  manner  was  an  illustration  of  his 
way  of  thinking.  He  would  lose  his  place  just  as  his  mind 
would  drop  its  thought  and  pick  up  another,  twentieth 
cousin  or  no  relation  at  all  to  it.  This  went  so  far  at  times 
that  one  could  hardly  tell  whether  he  was  putting  together 
a  mosaic  of  colored  fragments,  or  only  turning  a  kaleido 
scope  where  the  pieces  tumbled  about  as  they  best  might. 
It  was  as  if  he  had  been  looking  in  at  a  cosmic  peep-show, 
and  turning  from  it  at  brief  intervals  to  tell  us  what  he 
saw.  But  what  fragments  these  colored  sentences  were, 


Tributes  to  Emerson.  47 

and  what  pictures  they  often  placed  before  us,  as  if  we  too 
saw  them !  Never  has  this  city  known  such  audiences  as 
he  gathered ;  never  was  such  an  Olympian  entertainment  as 
that  which  he  gave  them. 

It  is  very  hard  to  speak  of  Mr.  Emerson's  poetry ;  not  to 
do  it  injustice,  still  more  to  do  it  justice.  It  seems  to  me 
like  the  robe  of  a  monarch  patched  by  a  New  England 
housewife.  The  royal  tint  and  stuff  are  unmistakable,  but 
here  and  there  the  gray  worsted  from  the  darning-needle 
crosses  and  ekes  out  the  Tyrian  purple.  Few  poets  who 
have  written  so  little  in  verse  have  dropped  so  many  of 
those  "jewels  five  words  long"  which  fall  from  their  setting 
only  to  be  more  choicely  treasured.  E  pluribus  unum  is 
hardly  more  familiar  to  our  ears  than  "  He  builded  better 
than  he  knew,"  and  Keats's  "thing  of  beauty"  is  little  bet 
ter  known  than  Emerson's  "beauty  is  its  own  excuse  for 
being."  One  may  not  like  to  read  Emerson's  poetry  be 
cause  it  is  sometimes  careless,  almost  as  if  carefully  so, 
though  never  undignified  even  when  slipshod ;  spotted  with 
quaint  archaisms  and  strange  expressions  that  sound  like 
the  affectation  of  negligence,  or  with  plain,  homely  phrases, 
such  as  the  self-made  scholar  is  always  afraid  of.  But  if 
one  likes  Emerson's  poetry  he  will  be  sure  to  love  it ;  if  he 
loves  it,  its  phrases  will  cling  to  him  as  hardly  any  others 
do.  It  may  not  be  for  the  multitude,  but  it  finds  its  place 
like  pollen-dust  and  penetrates  to  the  consciousness  it  is  to 
fertilize  and  bring  to  flower  and  fruit. 

I  have  known  something  of  Emerson  as  a  talker,  not 
nearly  so  much  as  many  others  who  can  speak  and  write  of 
him.  It  is  unsafe  to  tell  how  a  great  thinker  talks,  for  per- 


48  Massachusetts  Historical  Society. 

haps,  like  a  city  dealer  with  a  village  customer,  he  has  not 
shown  his  best  goods  to  the  innocent  reporter  of  his  say 
ings.  However  that  may  be  in  this  case,  let  me  contrast  in 
a  single  glance  the  momentary  effect  in  conversation  of  the 
two  neighbors,  Hawthorne  and  Emerson.  Speech  seemed 
like  a  kind  of  travail  to  Hawthorne.  One  must  harpoon 
him  like  a  cetacean  with  questions  to  make  him  talk  at  all. 
Then  the  words  came  from  him  at  last,  with  bashful  mani 
festations,  like  those  of  a  young  girl,  almost,  —  words  that 
gasped  themselves  forth,  seeming  to  leave  a  great  deal  more 
behind  them  than  they  told,  and  died  out,  discontented  with 
themselves,  like  the  monologue  of  thunder  in  the  sky,  which 
always  goes  off  mumbling  and  grumbling  as  if  it  had  not 
said  half  it  wanted  to,  and  meant  to,  and  ought  to  say. 

Emerson  was  sparing  of  words,  but  used  them  with  great 
precision  and  nicety.  If  he  had  been  followed  about  by  a 
short-hand  writing  Boswell,  every  sentence  he  ever  uttered 
might  have  been  preserved.  To  hear  him  talk  was  like 
watching  one  crossing  a  brook  on  stepping-stones.  His 
noun  had  to  wait  for  its  verb  or  its  adjective  until  he  was 
ready;  then  his  speech  would  come  down  upon  the  word 
he  wanted,  and  not  Worcester  and  Webster  could  better  it 
from  all  the  wealth  of  their  huge  vocabularies. 

These  are  only  slender  rays  of  side-light  on  a  personality 
which  is  interesting  in  every  aspect  and  will  be  fully  illus 
trated  by  those  who  knew  him  best.  One  glimpse  of  him 
as  a  listener  may  be  worth  recalling.  He  was  always  cour 
teous  and  bland  to  a  remarkable  degree ;  his  smile  was  the 
well-remembered  line  of  Terence  written  out  in  living  fea 
tures.  But  when  anything  said  specially  interested  him  he 


Tributes  to  Emerson.  49 

would  lean  toward  the  speaker  with  a  look  never  to  be  for 
gotten,  his  head  stretched  forward,  his  shoulders  raised  like 
the  wings  of  an  eagle,  and  his  eye  watching  the  flight  of 
the  thought  which  had  attracted  his  attention  as  if  it  were 
his  prey  to  be  seized  in  mid-air  and  carried  up  to  his  eyry. 

To  sum  up  briefly  what  would,  as  it  seems  to  me,  be  the 
text  to  be  unfolded  in  his  biography,  he  was  a  man  of  excel 
lent  common-sense,  with  a  genius  so  uncommon  that  he 
seemed  like  an  exotic  transplanted  from  some  angelic  nur 
sery.  His  character  was  so  blameless,  so  beautiful,  that  it 
was  rather  a  standard  to  judge  others  by  than  to  find  a 
place  for  on  the  scale  of  comparison.  Looking  at  life  with 
the  profoundest  sense  of  its  infinite  significance,  he  was 
yet  a  cheerful  optimist,  almost  too  hopeful,  peeping  into 
every  cradle  to  see  if  it  did  not  hold  a  babe  with  the  halo  of 
a  new  Messiah  about  it.  He  enriched  the  treasure-house 
of  literature,  but,  what  was  far  more,  he  enlarged  the  boun 
daries  of  thought  for  the  few  that  followed  him  and  the 
many  who  never  knew,  and  do  not  know  to-day,  what  hand 
it  was  which  took  down  their  prison  walls.  He  was  a 
preacher  who  taught  that  the  religion  of  humanity  included 
both  those  of  Palestine,  nor  those  alone,  and  taught  it  with 
such  consecrated  lips  that  the  narrowest  bigot  was  ashamed 
to  pray  for  him,  as  from  a  footstool  nearer  to  the  throne. 
"  Hitch  your  wagon  to  a  star; "  this  was  his  version  of  the 
divine  lesson  taught  by  that  holy  George  Herbert  whose 
words  he  loved.  Give  him  whatever  place  belongs  to  him 
in'  our  literature,  in  the  literature  of  our  language,  of  the 
world,  but  remember  this :  the  end  and  aim  of  his  being  was 
to  make  truth  lovely  and  manhood  valorous,  and  to  bring 


50  Massachusetts  Historical  Society. 

our  daily   life  nearer   and  nearer  to  the  eternal,  immortal, 
invisible. 

After  the  address  of  Dr.  Holmes,  the  Rev.  James  Freeman 
Clarke,  D.  D.,  spoke  of  his  long  acquaintance  with  Mr.  Emerson  and 
read  several  interesting  extracts  from  letters  which  he  had  received 
from  him  at  an  early  period  of  his  career.  At  the  close  of  his  re 
marks  Dr.  Clarke  presented  the  following  resolution,  which  was 
adopted  by  a  rising  vote  :  — 

"Resolved,  That  this  Society  unites  in  the  wide-spread 
expression  of  esteem,  gratitude,  and  affectionate  reverence 
paid  to  the  memory  of  our  late  associate,  Ralph  Waldo 
Emerson,  and  recognizes  the  great  influence  exercised  by  his 
character  and  writings  to  elevate,  purify,  and  quicken  the 
thought  of  our  time." 


THE  following  is  a  reprint,  from  the  Proceedings  of  the  Society,  of  the 
paper  read  by  MR.  EMERSON  on  the  date  and  occasion  above  referred  to  :  — 


IMPRESSIONS  OF  THOMAS  CARLYLE  IN  1848. 

THOMAS  CARLYLE  is  an  immense  talker,  as  extraordinary  in  his 
conversation  as  in  his  writing, —  I  think  even  more  so. 

He  is  not  mainly  a  scholar,  like  the  most  of  my  acquaintances,  but 
a  practical  Scotchman,  such  as  you  would  find  in  any  saddler's  or 
iron-dealer's  shop,  and  then  only  accidentally,  and  by  a  surprising 
addition,  the  admirable  scholar  and  writer  he  is.  If  you  would 
know  precisely  how  he  talks,  just  suppose  Hugh  Whelan  (the 
gardener)  had  found  leisure  enough  in  addition  to  all  his  daily 
work  to  read  Plato  and  Shakespeare,  Augustine  and  Calvin,  and, 
remaining  Hugh  Whelan  all  the  time,  should  talk  scornfully  of  all 
this  nonsense  of  books  that  he  had  been  bothered  with,  and  you 
shall  have  just  the  tone  and  talk  and  laughter  of  Carlyle. 

I  called  him  a  trip-hammer  with  "an  JEoYian  attachment."  He 
has,  too,  the  strong  religious  tinge  you  sometimes  find  in  burly  peo 
ple.  That,  and  all  his  qualities,  have  a  certain  virulence,  coupled 
though  it  be  in  his  case  with  the  utmost  impatience  of  Christen 
dom  and  Jewdom  and  all  existing  presentments  of  the  good  old 
story.  He  talks  like  a  very  unhappy  man,  —  profoundly  solitary, 
displeased  and  hindered  by  all  men  and  things  about  him,  and, 
biding  his  time,  meditating  how  to  undermine  and  explode  the 
whole  world  of  nonsense  which  torments  him.  He  is  obviously 
greatly  respected  by  all  sorts  of  people,  —  understands  his  own 


52  Massachusetts  Historical  Society. 

value  quite  as  well  as  Webster,  of  whom  his  behavior  sometimes 
reminds  me,  —  and  can  see  society  on  his  own  terms. 

And,  though  no  mortal  in  America  could  pretend  to  talk  with 
Carlyle,  who  is  also  as  remarkable  in  England  as  the  Tower  of 
London,  yet  neither  would  he  in  any  manner  satisfy  us  (Americans)  or 
begin  to  answer  the  questions  which  we  ask.  He  is  a  very  national 
figure,  and  would  by  no  means  bear  transplantation.  They  keep 
Carlyle  as  a  sort  of  portable  cathedral-bell,  which  they  like  to  pro 
duce  in  companies  where  he  is  unknown,  and  set  a-swinging,  to  the 
surprise  and  consternation  of  all  persons,  bishops,  courtiers,  scholars, 
writers,  and,  as  in  companies  here  (in  England)  no  man  is  named 
or  introduced,  great  is  the  effect  and  great  the  inquiry.  Forster  of 
Rawdon  described  to  me  a  dinner  at  the  table-d'hote  of  some  pro 
vincial  hotel  where  he  carried  Carlyle,  and  where  an  Irish  canon  had 
uttered  something ;  Carlyle  began  to  talk,  first  to  the  waiters  and 
then  to  the  walls,  and  then,  lastly,  unmistakably  to  the  priest,  in  a 
manner  that  frighted  the  whole  company. 

Young  men,  especially  those  holding  liberal  opinions,  press  to  see 
him,  but  it  strikes  me  like  being  hot  to  see  the  mathematical  or 
Greek  professor  before  they  have  got  their  lesson.  It  needs  some 
thing  more  than  a  clean  shirt  and  reading  German  to  visit  him. 
He  treats  them  with  contempt ;  they  profess  freedom,  and  he  stands 
for  slavery  ;  they  praise  republics,  and  he  likes  the  Russian  Czar ; 
they  admire  Cobden  and  free  trade,  and  he  is  a  protectionist  in 
political  economy  ;  they  will  eat  vegetables  and  drink  water,  and  he 
is  a  Scotchman  who  thinks  English  national  character  has  a  pure 
enthusiasm  for  beef  and  mutton,  describes  with  gusto  the  crowds 
of  people  who  gaze  at  the  sirloins  in  the  dealer's  shop-window,  and 
even  likes  the  Scotch  nightcap ;  they  praise  moral  suasion  ;  he  goes 
for  murder,  money,  capital  punishment,  and  other  pretty  abomi 
nations  of  English  law.  They  wish  freedom  of  the  press,  and  he 
thinks  the  first  thing  he  would  do,  if  he  got  into  Parliament,  would 
be  to  turn  out  the  reporters,  and  stop  all  manner  of  mischievous 
speaking  to  Buncombe  and  wind-bags.  "  In  the  Long  Parliament," 


Tributes  to  Emerson.  53 

he  says,  "  the  only  great  Parliament,  —  they  sat  secret  and  silent, 
grave  as  an  ecumenical  council,  and  I  know  not  what  they  would 
have  done  to  anybody  that  had  got  in  there,  and  attempted  to  tell 
out-of-doors  what  they  did."  They  go  for  free  institutions,  for  letting 
things  alone,  and  only  giving  opportunity  and  motive  to  every  man  ; 
he  for  a  stringent  government  that  shows  people  what  they  must  do, 
and  makes  them  do  it.  "  Here,"  he  says,  "  the  Parliament  gathers  up 
six  millions  of  pounds  every  year,  to  give  to  the  poor,  and  yet  the 
people  starve.  I  think  if  they  would  give  it  to  me,  to  provide  the 
poor  with  labor,  and  with  authority  to  make  them  work,  or  shoot 
them,  —  and  I  to  be  hanged  if  I  did  not  do  it,  —  I  could  find  them 
in  plenty  of  Indian  meal." 

He  throws  himself  readily  on  the  other  side.  If  you  urge  free 
trade,  he  remembers  that  every  laborer  is  a  monopolist.  The  navi 
gation  laws  of  England  made  its  commerce.  "  St.  John  was  insulted 
by  the  Dutch  ;  he  came  home,  got  the  law  passed  that  foreign  vessels 
should  pay  high  fees,  and  it  cut  the  throat  of  the  Dutch,  and  made 
the  English  trade."  If  you  boast  of  the  growth  of  the  country,  and 
show  him  the  wonderful  results  of  the  census,  he  finds  nothing  so 
depressing  as  the  sight  of  a  great  mob.  He  saw  once,  as  he  told 
me,  three  or  four  miles  of  human  beings,  and  fancied  that  "  the  airth 
was  some  great  cheese,  and  these  were  mites."  If  a  Tory  takes 
heart  at  his  hatred  of  stump  oratory  and  model  republics,  he  replies, 
"  Yes,  the  idea  of  a  pig-headed  soldier  who  will  obey  orders,  and  fire 
on  his  own  father  at  the  command  of  his  officer,  is  a  great  comfort 
to  the  aristocratic  mind."  It  is  not  so  much  that  Carlyle  cares  for 
this  or  that  dogma,  as  that  he  likes  genuineness  (the  source  of  all 
strength)  in  his  companions. 

If  a  scholar  goes  into'  a  camp  of  lumbermen  or  a  gang  of  riggers, 
those  men  will  quickly  detect  any  fault  of  character.  Nothing  will 
pass  with  them  but  what  is  real  and  sound.  So  this  man  is  a  ham 
mer  that  crushes  mediocrity  and  pretension.  He  detects  weakness 
on  the  instant,  and  touches  it.  He  has  a  vivacious,  aggressive  tem 
perament,  and  unimpressionable.  The  literary,  the  fashionable,  the 


54  Massachusetts  Historical  Society. 

political  man,  each  fresh  from  triumphs  in  his  own  sphere,  comes 
eagerly  to  see  this  man,  whose  fun  they  have  heartily  enjoyed,  sure 
of  a  welcome,  and  are  struck  with  despair  at  the  first  onset.  His 
firm,  victorious,  scoffing  vituperation  strikes  them  with  chill  and 
hesitation.  His  talk  often  reminds  you  of  what  was  said  of  John 
son  :  "  If  his  pistol  missed  fire  he  would  knock  you  down  with  the 
butt-end." 

Mere  intellectual  partisanship  wearies  him  ;  he  detects  in  an  in 
stant  if  a  man  stands  for  any  cause  to  which  he  is  not  born  and 
organically  committed.  A  natural  defender  of  anything,  a  lover 
who  will  live  and  die  for  that  which  he  speaks  for,  and  who  does 
not  care  for  him,  or  for  anything  but  his  own  business,  —  he  re 
spects:  and  the  nobler  this  object,  of  course,  the  better.  He  hates 
a  literary  trifler,  and  if,  after  Guizot  had  been  a  tool  of  Louis  Philippe 
for  years,  he  is  now  to  come  and  write  essays  on  the  character  of 
Washington,  on  "  The  Beautiful,"  and  on  "  Philosophy  of  History," 
he  thinks  that  nothing. 

Great  is  his  reverence  for  realities,  —  for  all  such  traits  as  spring 
from  the  intrinsic  nature  of  the  actor.  He  humors  this  into  the 
idolatry  of  strength.  A  strong  nature  has  a  charm  for  him,  previous, 
it  would  seem,  to  all  inquiry  whether  the  force  be  divine  or  diabolic. 
He  preaches,  as  by  cannonade,  the  doctrine  that  every  noble  nature 
was  made  by  God,  and  contains,  if  savage  passions,  also  fit  checks 
and  grand  impulses,  and,  however  extravagant,  will  keep  its  orbit 
and  return  from  far. 

Nor  can  that  decorum  which  is  the  idol  of  the  Englishman,  and 
in  attaining  which  the  Englishman  exceeds  all  nations,  win  from 
him  any  obeisance.  He  is  eaten  up  with  indignation  against  such 
as  desire  to  make  a  fair  show  in  the  flesh. 

Combined  with  this  warfare  on  respectabilities,  and,  indeed,  point 
ing  all  his  satire,  is  the  severity  of  his  moral  sentiment.  In  propor 
tion  to  the  peals  of  laughter  amid  which  he  strips  the  plumes  of  a 
pretender  and  shows  the  lean  hypocrisy  to  every  vantage  of  ridicule, 
does  he  worship  whatever  enthusiasm,  fortitude,  love,  or  other  sign 
of  a  good  nature  is  in  a  man. 


Tributes  to  Emerson.  55 

There  is  nothing  deeper  in  his  constitution  than  his  humor,  than 
the  considerate,  condescending  good-nature  with  which  he  looks  at 
every  object  in  existence,  as  a  man  might  look  at  a  mouse.  He 
feels  that  the  perfection  of  health  is  sportiveness,  and  will  not  look 
grave  even  at  dulness  or  tragedy. 

His  guiding  genius  is  his  moral  sense,  his  perception  of  the  sole 
importance  of  truth  and  justice;  but  that  is  a  truth  of  character, 
not  of  catechisms. 

He  says,  "  There  is  properly  no  religion  in  England.  These 
idle  nobles  at  Tattersall's,  —  there  is  no  work  or  word  of  serious 
purpose  in  them  ;  they  have  this  great  lying  church ;  and  life  is  a 
humbug."  He  prefers  Cambridge  to  Oxford,  but  he  thinks  Oxford 
and  Cambridge  education  indurates  the  young  men,  as  the  Styx 
hardened  Achilles,  so  that  when  they  come  forth  of  them,  they  say, 
"  Now  we  are  proof :  we  have  gone  through  all  the  degrees,  and  are 
case-hardened  against  the  veracities  of  the  Universe ;  nor  man  nor 
God  can  penetrate  us." 

Wellington  he  respects  as  real  and  honest,  and  as  having  made 
up  his  mind,  once  for  all,  that  he  will  not  have  to  do  with  any  kind 
of  a  lie. 

Edwin  Chadwick  is  one  of  his  heroes,  —  who  proposes  to  provide 
every  house  in  London  with  pure  water,  sixty  gallons  to  every  head, 
at  a  penny  a  week ;  and  in  the  decay  and  downfall  of  all  religions, 
Carlyle  thinks  that  the  only  religious  act  which  a  man  nowadays  can 
securely  perform  is  to  wash  himself  well. 

Of  course  the  new  French  Revolution  of  1848  was  the  best  thing 
he  had  seen,  and  the  teaching  this  great  swindler,  Louis  Philippe, 
that  there  is  a  God's  justice  in  the  Universe,  after  all,  was  a  great 
satisfaction.  Czar  Nicholas  was  his  hero :  for,  in  the  ignominy  of 
Europe,  when  all  thrones  fell  like  card-houses,  and  no  man  was 
found  with  conscience  enough  to  fire  a  gun  for  his  crown,  but  every 
one  ran  away  in  a  coucou,  with  his  head  shaved,  through  the  Barriere 
de  Passy,  one  man  remained  who  believed  he  was  put  there  by  God 
Almighty  to  govern  his  empire,  and,  by  the  help  of  God,  had 
resolved  to  stand  there. 


56  Massachusetts  Historical  Society. 

He  was  very  serious  about  the  bad  times  ;  he  had  seen  this  evil 
coming,  but  thought  it  would  not  come  in  his  time.  But  now  't  is 
coming,  and  the  only  good  he  sees  in  it  is  the  visible  appearance  of 
the  gods.  He  thinks  it  the  only  question  for  wise  men,  instead  of 
art,  and  fine  fancies,  and  poetry,  and  such  things,  —  to  address  them 
selves  to  the  problem  of  society.  This  confusion  is  the  inevitable 
end  of  such  falsehood  and  nonsense  as  they  have  been  embroiled 
with. 

Carlyle  has,  best  of  all  men  in  England,  kept  the  manly  attitude 
in  his  time.  He  has  stood  for  scholars,  asking  no  scholar  what  he 
should  say.  Holding  an  honored  place  in  the  best  society,  he  has 
stood  for  the  people,  for  the  Chartist,1  for  the  pauper,  intrepidly  and 
scornfully  teaching  the  nobles  their  peremptory  duties. 

His  errors  of  opinion  are  as  nothing  in  comparison  with  this 
merit,  in  my  judgment.  This  aplomb  cannot  be  mimicked;  it  is 
the  speaking  to  the  heart  of  the  thing.  And  in  England,  where 
the  morgue  of  aristocracy  has  very  slowly  admitted  scholars  into 
society,  —  a  very  few  houses  only  in  the  high  circles  being  ever 
opened  to  them,  —  he  has  carried  himself  erect,  made  himself  a 
power  confessed  by  all  men,  and  taught  scholars  their  lofty  duty. 
He  never  feared  the  face  of  man. 


The  following  is  the  Speech  by  MR.  EMERSON  at  the  Burns  Centenary, 
referred  to  by  Mr.  Hoar,  in  his  letter  as  printed  on  a  previous  page  :  — 

SPEECH  BEFORE  THE  BOSTON  BURNS  CLUB. 

MR.  PRESIDENT  AND  GENTLEMEN, —  I  do  not  know  by  what 
untoward  accident  it  has  chanced  —  and  I  forbear  to  inquire  —  that, 
in  this  accomplished  circle,  it  should  fall  to  me,  the  worst  Scots 
man  of  all,  to  receive  your  commands,  and  at  the  latest  hour,  too, 

1  The  Chartists  were  then  preparing  to  go  in  a  procession  of  200,000,  to  carry  their 
petition,  embodying  the  six  points  of  Chartism,  to  the  House  of  Commons,  on  the  loth 
of  April,  1848. 


Tributes  to  Emerson.  57 

to  respond  to  the  sentiment  just  offered,  and  which  indeed  makes 
the  occasion.  But  I  am  told  there  is  no  appeal,  and  I  must  trust 
to  the  inspiration  of  the  theme  to  make  a  fitness  which  does  not 
otherwise  exist. 

Yet,  sir,  I  heartily  feel  the  singular  claims  of  the  occasion.  At 
the  first  announcement,  from  I  know  not  whence,  that  the  25th  of 
January  was  the  hundredth  anniversary  of  the  birth  of  Robert  Burns, 
a  sudden  consent  warmed  the  great  English  race,  in  all  its  king 
doms,  colonies,  and  states,  all  over  the  world,  to  keep  the  festival. 

We  are  here  to  hold  our  parliament  with  love  and  poesy,  as  men 
were  wont  to  do  in  the  middle  ages.  Those  famous  parliaments 
might  or  might  not  have  had  more  stateliness,  and  better  singers 
than  we  —  though  that  is  yet  to  be  known  —  but  they  could  not 
have  better  reason. 

I  can  only  explain  this  singular  unanimity  in  a  race  which 
rarely  acts  together,  but  rather  after  their  watchword,  each  for 
himself  —  by  the  fact  that  Robert  Burns,  the  poet  of  the  middle 
class,  represents  in  the  mind  of  men  to-day  that  great  uprising  of 
the  middle  class  against  the  armed  and  privileged  minorities  —  that 
uprising  which  worked  politically  in  the  American  and  French 
Revolutions,  and  which,  not  in  governments  so  much  as  in  educa 
tion  and  in  social  order,  has  changed  the  face  of  the  world. 

In  order  for  this  destiny,  his  birth,  breeding,  and  fortune  were 
low.  His  organic  sentiment  was  absolute  independence,  and  rest 
ing,  as  it  should,  on  a  life  of  labor.  No  man  existed  who  could 
look  down  on  him.  They  that  looked  into  his  eyes  saw  that  they 
might  look  down  the  sky  as  easily.  His  muse  and  teaching  was 
common  sense,  joyful,  aggressive,  irresistible. 

Not  Latimer,  not  Luther,  struck  more  telling  blows  against 
false  theology  than  did  this  brave  singer.  The  "  Confession  of 
Augsburg,"  the  "  Declaration  of  Independence,"  the  French 
"  Rights  of  Man,"  and  the  "  Marseillaise  "  are  not  more  weighty 
documents  in  the  history  of  freedom  than  the  songs  of  Burns. 
His  satire  has  lost  none  of  its  edge.  His  musical  arrows  yet  sing 


through  the  air. 


8 


58  Massachusetts  Historical  Society. 

He  is  so  substantially  a  reformer,  that  I  find  his  grand  plain 
sense  in  close  chain  with  the  greatest  masters  —  Rabelais,  Shakes 
peare  in  comedy,  Cervantes,  Butler,  and  Burns.  If  I  should  add 
another  name,  I  find  it  only  in  a  living  countryman  of  Burns.  He 
is  an  exceptional  genius.  The  people  who  care  nothing  for  litera 
ture  and  poetry  care  for  Burns.  It  was  indifferent  —  they  thought 
who  saw  him  —  whether  he  wrote  verse  or  not ;  he  could  have 
done  anything  else  as  well. 

Yet  how  true  a  poet  is  he !  And  the  poet,  too,  of  poor  men,  of 
hodden-gray,  and  the  Guernsey-coat,  and  the  blouse.  He  has  given 
voice  to  all  the  experiences  of  common  life  ;  he  has  endeared  the 
farm-house  and  cottage,  patches  and  poverty,  beans  and  barley  ; 
ale,  the  poor  man's  wine ;  hardship,  the  fear  of  debt,  the  dear  so 
ciety  of  weans  and  wife,  of  brothers  and  sisters,  proud  of  each 
other,  knowing  so  few,  and  finding  amends  for  want  and  obscurity 
in  books  and  thought.  What  a  love  of  nature !  and,  shall  I  say  it, 
of  middle-class  nature.  Not  great,  like  Goethe,  in  the  stars,  or  like 
Byron  on  the  ocean,  or  Moore  in  the  luxurious  East,  but  in  the 
homely  landscape  which  the  poor  see  around  them  —  bleak  leagues 
of  pasture  and  stubble,  ice,  and  sleet,  and  rain,  and  snow-choked 
brooks ;  birds,  hares,  field-mice,  thistles,  and  heather,  which  he 
daily  knew.  How  many  "Bonny  Boons,"  and  "John  Anderson 
my  joes,"  and  "Auld  Lang  Synes,"  all  around  the  earth,  have  his 
verses  been  applied  to  !  And  his  love-songs  still  woo  and  melt  the 
youths  and  maids  ;  the  farm  work,  the  country  holiday,  the  fishing 
cobble,  are  still  his  debtors  to-day. 

And,  as  he  was  thus  the  poet  of  the  poor,  anxious,  cheerful, 
working  humanity,  so  had  he  the  language  of  low  life.  He  grew 
up  in  a  rural  district,  speaking  a  patois  unintelligible  to  all  but  na 
tives,  and  he  has  made  that  Lowland  Scotch  a  Doric  dialect  of 
fame.  It  is  the  only  example  in  history  of  a  language  made  classic 
by  the  genius  of  a  single  man.  But  more  than  this.  He  had  that 
secret  of  genius  to  draw  from  the  bottom  of  society  the  strength 
of  its  speech,  and  astonish  the  ears  of  the  polite  with  these  artless 


Tributes  to  Emerson.  59 

words,  better  than  art,  and  filtered  of  all  offence  through  his  beauty. 
It  seemed  odious  to  Luther  that  the  devil  should  have  all  the  best 
tunes  ;  he  would  bring  them  into  the  churches  ;  and  Burns  knew 
how  to  take  from  fairs  and  gypsies,  blacksmiths  and  drovers,  the 
speech  of  the  market  and  street,  and  clothe  it  with  melody. 

But  I  am  detaining  you  too  long.  The  memory  of  Burns  —  I 
am  afraid  heaven  and  earth  have  taken  too  good  care  of  it,  to 
leave  us  anything  to  say.  The  west  winds  are  murmuring  it. 
Open  the  windows  behind  you,  and  hearken  for  the  incoming 
tide,  what  the  waves  say  of  it.  The  doves  perching  always 
on  the  eaves  of  the  Stone  Chapel  opposite,  may  know  something 
about  it.  Every  name  in  broad  Scotland  keeps  his  fame  bright. 
The  memory  of  Burns  —  every  man's,  and  boy's,  and  girl's  head 
carries  snatches  of  his  songs,  and  can  say  them  by  heart,  and,  what 
is  strangest  of  all,  never  learned  them  from  a  book,  but  from  mouth 
to  mouth.  The  wind  whispers  them,  the  birds  whistle  them,  the 
corn,  barley,  and  bulrushes  hoarsely  rustle  them ;  nay,  the  music- 
boxes  at  Geneva  are  framed  and  toothed  to  play  them ;  the  hand- 
organs  of  the  Savoyards  in  all  cities  repeat  them,  and  the  chimes 
of  bells  ring  them  in  the  spires.  They  are  the  property  and  the 
solace  of  mankind. 


At  the  Commemorative  recognition  of  Sir  Walter  Scott,  as  it  was 
noticed  by  this  Society,  i5th  August,  1871,  MR.  EMERSON  spoke  as  fol 
lows  :  — 

SIR    WALTER    SCOTT. 

The  memory  of  Sir  Walter  Scott  is  dear  to  this  Society,  of 
which  he  was  for  ten  years  an  honorary  member.  If  only  as  an 
eminent  antiquary  who  has  shed  light  on  the  history  of  Europe 
and  of  the  English  race,  he  had  high  claims  to  our  regard.  But 
to  the  rare  tribute  of  a  centennial  anniversary  of  his  birthday, 
which  we  gladly  join  with  Scotland  and  indeed  with  Europe  to 


60  Massachusetts  Historical  Society. 

keep,  he  is  not  less  entitled  —  perhaps  he  alone  among  the  liter 
ary  men  of  this  century  is  entitled  —  by  the  exceptional  debt 
which  all  English-speaking  men  have  gladly  owed  to  his  character 
and  genius.  I  think  no  modern  writer  has  inspired  his  readers 
with  such  affection  to  his  own  personality.  I  can  well  remember 
as  far  back  as  when  "  The  Lord  of  the  Isles  "  was  first  republished 
in  Boston,  in  1815,  —  my  own  and  my  schoolfellows'  joy  in  the 
book.  "  Marmion "  and  "  The  Lay "  had  gone  before,  but  we 
were  then  learning  to  spell.  In  the  face  of  the  later  novels,  we 
still  claim  that  his  poetry  is  the  delight  of  boys.  But  this  means 
that  when  we  reopen  these  old  books,  we  all  consent  to  be  boys 
again.  We  tread  over  our  youthful  grounds  with  joy.  Critics 
have  found  them  to  be  only  rhymed  prose.  But  I  believe  that 
many  of  those  who  read  them  in  youth,  when,  later,  they  come  to 
dismiss  finally  their  school-days'  library,  will  make  some  fond  ex 
ception  for  Scott  as  for  Byron. 

It  is  easy  to  see  the  origin  of  his  poems.  His  own  ear  had  been 
charmed  by  old  ballads  crooned  by  Scottish  dames  at  firesides,  and 
written  down  from  their  lips  by  antiquaries ;  and,  finding  them 
now  outgrown  and  dishonored  by  the  new  .culture,  he  attempted  to 
dignify  and  adapt  them  to  the  times  in  which  he  lived.  Just  so 
much  thought,  so  much  picturesque  detail  in  dialogue  or  descrip 
tion  as  the  old  ballad  required,  so  much  suppression  of  details,  and 
leaping  to  the  event,  he  would  keep  and  use,  but  without  any  am 
bition  to  write  a  high  poem  after  a  classic  model.  He  made  no 
pretension  to  the  lofty  style  of  Spenser,  or  Milton,  or  Wordsworth. 
Compared  with  their  purified  songs,  —  purified  of  all  ephemeral 
color  or  material,  —  his  were  vers  de  socittd.  But  he  had  the  skill 
proper  to  vers  de  socittt,  —  skill  to  fit  his  verse  to  his  topic,  and 
not  to  write  solemn  pentameters  alike  on  a  hero  or  a  spaniel.  His 
good  sense  probably  elected  the  ballad,  to  make  his  audience  larger. 
He  apprehended  in  advance  the  immense  enlargement  of  the 
reading  public,  which  almost  dates  from  the  era  of  his  books,  —  an 
event  which  his  books  and  Byron's  inaugurated ;  and  which, 


Tributes  to  Emerson.  61 

though  until  then  unheard  of,  has  become  familiar  to  the  present 
time.  * 

If  the  success  of  his  poems,  however  large,  was  partial,  that  of 
his  novels  was  complete.  The  tone  of  strength  in  "  Waverley  "  at 
once  announced  the  master,  and  was  more  than  justified  by  the 
superior  genius  of  the  following  romances,  up  to  the  "Bride  of 
Lammermoor,"  which  almost  goes  back  to  ^Eschylus,  for  a  coun 
terpart,  as  a  painting  of  Fate,  —  leaving  on  every  reader  the  impres 
sion  of  the  highest  and  purest  tragedy. 

His  power  on  the  public  mind  rests  on  the  singular  union  of 
two  influences.  By  nature,  by  his  reading  and  taste,  an  aristocrat, 
in  a  time  and  country  which  easily  gave  him  that  bias,  he  had  the 
virtues  and  graces  of  that  class,  and  by  his  eminent  humanity  and 
his  love  of  labor  escaped  its  harm.  He  saw  in  the  English  Church 
the  symbol  and  seal  of  all  social  order  ;  in  the  historical  aristocracy, 
the  benefits  to  the  state  which  Burke  claimed  for  it ;  and  in  his 
own  reading  and  research,  such  store  of  legend  and  renown  as 
won  his  imagination  to  their  cause.  Not  less  his  eminent  humanity 
delighted  in  the  sense  and  virtue  and  wit  of  the  common  people. 
In  his  own  household  and  neighbors  he  found  characters  and  pets 
of  humble  class,  with  whom  he  established  the  best  relation, — 
small  farmers  and  tradesmen,  shepherds,  fishermen,  gypsies,  peas 
ant-girls,  crones,  —  and  carne  with  these  into  real  ties  of  mutual 
help  and  good-will.  From  these  originals  he  drew  so  genially  his 
Jeannie  Deans,  his  Dinmonts  and  Edie  Ochiltrees,  Caleb  Balder- 
stone  and  Fairservice,  Cuddie  Headriggs,  Dominies,  Meg  Merri- 
lies  and  Jeannie  Rintherouts,  full  of  life  and  reality  ;  making  these, 
too,  the  pivots  on  which  the  plots  of  his  stories  turn  ;  and  mean 
time  without  one  word  of  brag  of  this  discernment, — nay,  this  ex 
treme  sympathy  reaching  down  to  every  beggar  and  beggar's  dog, 
and  horse  and  cow.  In  the  number  and  variety  of  his  characters, 
he  approaches  Shakespeare.  Other  painters  in  verse  or  prose  have 
thrown  into  literature  a  few  type-figures,  as  Cervantes,  DeFoe, 
Richardson,  Goldsmith,  Sterne,  and  Fielding  ;  but  Scott  portrayed 


62  Massachusetts  Historical  Society. 

with  equal  strength  and  success  every  figure  in  his  crowded 
company. 

His  strong  good  sense  saved  him  from  the  faults  and  foibles  in 
cident  to  poets,  —  from  nervous  egotism,  sham  modesty,  or  jealousy. 
He  played  ever  a  manly  part.  With  such  a  fortune  and  such  a 
genius,  we  should  look  to  see  what  heavy  toll  the  Fates  took  of 
him,  as  of  Rousseau  or  Voltaire,  of  Swift  or  Byron.  But  no  :  he  had 
no  insanity,  or  vice,  or  blemish.  He  was  a  thoroughly  upright, 
wise,  and  great-hearted  man,  equal  to  whatever  event  or  fortune 
should  try  him.  Disasters  only  drove  him  to  immense  exertion. 
What  an  ornament  and  safeguard  is  humor !  Far  better  than  wit 
for  a  poet  and  writer.  It  is  a  genius  itself,  and  so  defends  from 
the  insanities. 

Under  what  rare  conjunction  of  stars  was  this  man  born,  that, 
wherever  he  lived,  he  found  superior  men,  passed  all  his  life  in  the 
best  company,  and  still  found  himself  the  best  of  the  best !  He 
was  apprenticed  at  Edinburgh  to  a  Writer  to  the  Signet,  and  be 
came  a  Writer  to  the  Signet,  and  found  himself  in  his  youth  and 
manhood  and  age  in  the  society  of  Mackintosh,  Horner,  Jeffrey, 
Playfair,  Dugald  Stewart,  Sydney  Smith,  Leslie,  Sir  William  Ham 
ilton,  Wilson,  Hogg,  De  Quincey,  —  to  name  only  some  of  his  literary 
neighbors. 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 
BERKELEY 

Return  to  desk  from  which  borrowed. 
This  book  is  DUE  on  the  last  date  stamped  below. 


17jafi'60MH§ 
REC'D  Lit) 

•«•!< 

FEB   419SB     jANi) 


2)in'638PX 


1 


RECD 


220ct'55PT 


5Nov'?9Js 
REC'D  LD 

OCT231959 


LD  21-100m-9,'47(A5702sl6)476 


JAN  1 2  1D63 


M188274 


THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 


